-after Joy Harjo’s “For Calling the Spirit Back from
                                               Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet”

fish the plastic handle from your barefoot floorboards :: stretch to
set it up and into the socket it keeps falling loose from above you

crank that sunroof open all the way :: ask wind to lift the sunlit
the incandescent strands of your hair/your heirs :: let the air

swim among your gills and then squeeze it gently out again
with every flapping wingspan :: then let the ancestors whisper

the secrets of the one within us all who does the seeking :: let the
feral cottonwood tree and her seedling puffs hold us all fast to the

spinning sky :: and when you fall/fault/falter you can always
rinse the wounds in your own salt water :: let the outer layers

slough back to earth when they’re done with you and climb at
night into the whale’s deep heart if she will let you :: curl snug

into her dark-ness/next/nest :: let her song bring you curious
and whole into your expanded body of stars because one day

you will be the one leaning on a wobbly screen door calling your
own name out to come back to the only home there is :: within

before the lavender of dusk dissolves the backyard :: the whole
block into the inkiest of spacetimes :: now :: zithered in fireflies

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