Survival in the Valley

And the thread of a constellation

hidden behind a sweet morning

came when my eyes were full 

of last night’s dream beyond the mountains,

what did I see like belonging and exile?

These sweet stars put me to death

between nocturnal peaks;

a corpse in liminal space.

That existence is violent like this flower

here, in my grandmother’s 

rolling fields, rolling rolling fields .. 

That survival bloomed like a gasp 

in the shadows of these peaks

under the triple gem, under the triple gem .. 

The undying have liberated me,

undeserving— like an apricot bloom 

that asked me to find its first petal ..

I’ve stumbled on yesterday

where at the foot of this mountain

I was born in a cradle of stones, 

I’ve died so crisply

at the peak of this exile

on a bed of glacial non-belonging,

here I live for ever more

with every gentle stream, every gentle scream

I, every shade of sacred green,

here, survival 

sounds like thunder

and tastes like butter

and looks like

my grandmother

as she counts zodiacs,

she, who stretched from sunburnt earth, 

to become this dream I had

of a thousand constellations.