rotation

if i stay silent
stay still
i can feel the house sliding towards me
and i sliding away towards the neighbors' house
everything moving to the right
to the east
to the night

a steady progression
or is it regression
this pull, this slide away from sun
back to the dark
i don't often write politics
but i want to run back to the west
back to the sunlight
and keep running
i want to be able to walk on water
if that is what it will take

but I fear i am growing old
years ago, with young children in my hands
i stood on mountains
watched the stars in their destined dance
i plotted their progress, named their arrangements
knew the name of month by pre-dawn constellations
as we lay on stacked rock
under moving skies
we anticipated each dawn

society likes our ceilings too much these days
likes them only eight or nine feet high
and plastered. or sheet-rocked.
painted. wall papered.
placing an artificial light in what we supposed
the center and a switch, placed elbow-height
so we can flip it on
slide it up ... slide it down

even i am guilty of this these days
i want things simple
i want to be taken care of
but i am educated, not willing to forget
intentionally that which i've worked
so hard to learn
to retain

progress was stacking rocks
building a sure foundation to lay on
holding hands with our children on our left
and pointing out the polaris with our right.
progress was helping our neighbor stack rocks
eating our meals together, migrating together.

it wasn't plush, wasn't gold-plated
it wasn't the life of a master or lord
it was honest and we wrote books
we painted, used sun light to photograph
we listened and plowed, harvested and sown seeds.

when we are forty, we sent our children to college
plowed while they reaped, migrated, followed the sun
built bridges of stacked rocks when needed.
now we are told there is no evolution

most mattresses makes morning backs ache now
laying with eyes closed, faces towards ceiling
curtains closed so we didn't see the sun rise

oh, can't you feel that nauseating slide
to the east, back to where we came

feel the house slide over you as you stay still