Book of Life
September 2001

a scribe filling pages with ink from the deep sea, papyrus paper, a table with a candle lit, spilling wax to its wooden planks.

and firemen they rush into buildings covered gray with chalky soot like moon rocks like rocks falling everything falling

or everything pushed,
or lost, stolen. the ink is thick and clear, invisible, but it sinks in and wets the pages, like salt water laps into tributaries, reversing rivers,
putting minerals back into stones, sinking oil into wells,
sending lightning into clouds, and clouds to mist, to darkness, starlight.

the firemen are standing by the river.
in threes and fours they are pointing, looking. facing the river, some dive in.
the water is golden light. it is the only time the ink is visible,
and the firemen can see it, we can see it.

rivers forget, or the rocks confuse them:

"go this way, no that way,"
until the rivers decide,

and then, no matter what, the river is always against the rocks, always,
the river is singing:

"a rock is not a stone.
a stone is not a rock."