John Matthew Heard at MOUNTAINS

             when in peril

No additional text for print.

So read the primordial saturations. Through and through, like the baleen of the whale’s jaw : sieves,
shudder-lit, tendering, it filters the krill from the mass, the invisible proteins, the microcosm from
the chasm, the thing from the wanton, yes it wrings the sea through the verdant sea.

Ever since childhood you have known. The artist has this obligation to desire, the way color
requires vowels. The way the phone has its own diabolical tastebuds. The way the bones of snowy
owls are found in the Abyssal Plain. We have this obligation to follow its helpless migration, its
incandescent howl. To put foot to soil, silt to bed.

Dolphins of words leap from the crevices. They candle and hiss, arcing in you. There is only one
Ocean. It is not metaphorical for those who live it.
My friend who was born on her parents fishing boat in Alaska, a twin, tells me this.

The hummingbird drifts from land for fragrance is not always rooted to cause.

Sleep is a moat full of hungry ghosts, around the red crumb of winter.

Seeing is a sinking ship. Watering to obscure that shape.

What happens to places water once needed ?

Time      gets used for a lot of things …

Our house in the desert belongs to geckos now. They are the hue of having eaten spiders in
silence on cactus pads. Warm blue, cold orange, beak-pierced, cunning. Jack has been there.

When in peril, geckos lose their tails on purpose, leaving them behind for the hunter, a phantom
body loose in the dune, one could use to make this work.

Devin Alexander