Day cycle

In the dark I dream jungles.

Hissing silence made of so many sounds they blend; wet air, anoles swelling red throats in the spattered patches of sun.

The smell of mould and small bodies rotting under leaves.

The feel of bark in my memory, rough or smooth, crumbling under questing fingers, peeling back to show the skittering life under the skin.

Life upon life upon life, so fecund it can suffocate unless you learn to breathe in time with the pulse…in…out….thick beats felt behind my eyes and under my tongue.


At dawn, when dew is on the grass and the air is still, the air tastes of wine drunk in the land outside memory.

The first touch of newborn breeze strokes across skin and wakes me to my core, from the tingle of my spine to the ache in my chest, crying for something I have never known, something just outside my grasp.


In the day there is high prairie, and the bones of the land push up through the skin.

Grass, sand, air that tastes of dust and distance.

Thin scrum of life clinging to the ground, beneath stones, in the shallow gullies, beneath leaves of sage and mesquite, hiding from the harsh rays of the close sun.


The sun wanes and falls below the mountains. Sky streaks with gold, with red, with violet, and the world hushes as the eternal moment happens.

The sky glows indigo and the creatures of the darkness stir and open wide-pupiled eyes.

The first calls of bats pass my ears and sing along the hair on my nape, raising this body’s oldest memories, of twilight dances…jungle dreams return.