Peter Walks for Democracy

YES MEN

An old man is educed

into the light and water corridors,

He passes into

being another being’s way of

becoming a passage, borrowed and

beginning again as animal.

He becomes a passage for pattering rain that

fell through a many-lobed canopy

before it kissed the stream’s soft lips

before it became thirsty blood or the

shimmering grace on his hands in the eddy

 

As the Earth turns the sun’s disc

peeks over Tussey ridge to greet

a man

kneeling where Queen Anne’s Lace and chicory meet

blueberries and laurel before

the swamp white oaks’ upward thrust.

He kneels where nine species of bees, wasps, and flies

feverishly drink sweet nectar.

He kneels where the spider’s hunger

becomes his own,        hunger.                        The fly’s iridescent patina glints

as it dies, drunk           in the web.

He kneels where needle-festooned soil

becomes the blueberries,                      becomes

his body, her breath     his                                breath.

He kneels knowing

he is

the corridor,

He stands and runs his fingers’ pads through the

bark’s channels and crenellations

inviting his body to be the difference

between tips and nails,                        nail and bark,   bark and lignum,

the lignum       and

heartwood.

 

Men in worn denim, men—yes

men—climb

into cabs to rip the soil.

A man grips

a plastic-topped shifter.

jams

his feet on the bulldozer’s throttle and

punches

down the trees whose roots were threads,

woven together as stitches.

A man unstitches

and frays the soil for

 

Yes Men.

Yes, men

grab the blooming laurel by neck,

push the deer’s teeth to the curb,

force the toad’s tongues to lick the road salt,

and the tanager to

 

breathe

 

the sweet antifreeze and thick scent of tar,

and then the men

 

kick

and

kick

again until they’ve

kicked

as many jaws, teeth, and necks to build

the walls to the fortresses we call offices as

men need.

 

Some men keep writing

rules so the winners can have

some men walk the hallways to join

some men in rooms designed to facilitate

some men protecting the

rules they built for

ruling

some men with machines could unstitch the soil to build structures

—not homes—

ruled by

some men.next to curbs where constant, roaring traffic

rules the roadside chicory, where

 

the stream greeted

men.