We'd be met

dedicated to films by John Scott

We’d be met

dedicated to films by John Scott

I.

Any one of us at any time walks an Alpine path.
Crisp kiss of air
and suitors in your peripheral sight
white hot with good intentions—
you (we) are ascending.

Little branches of green leaves tremble
when you brush past
on your way up.

The blue sky sings opera.
You can take so deep a breath it’s comical.
Phlox vibrate in the breeze.

II.

In truth, there are also cities.
We’ve flocked together like birds on a pier,
cawing, honking horns at crosswalks,
and piling on more and more
penthouses atop penthouses,
rough bay water undulating navy, spraying
a constant rearranging of wings,
feathered elbows jostling.

These are ornamental.
They are the middle part
before the end. Not to say they aren’t important.

III.

If I went out now to meet you,
we’d be met, meted out to each other.

Go out to the crossroads, dry high sky
and whatever or whoever is there greets you.

You greet it. “This has happened. The end
is reached and wrought.”

Any one of us, at any time
can save the world by giving over.

“Okay, fine. I’ll do it now.
Take me. This is my body.”

And what happens next,
now that the sacrifice is offered up?

Do winds change, the Earth repairs,
nations knitted up?

Or is it just that old story, oh yeah,
that one, where crumpled, soft
a body lays to rot—not rot, desiccate—
returning to dirt in a gentle dip in the lay of the land?

IV.

The answer is always perfect
and always contradictory—

emptiness the end of meaning,
the end of meaning ultimately profound.

Then: the flashback montage
of birds rising as one body.