Empathy Moon (Without One Another Who Are We)

Empathy (Without One Another Who Are We)

New Moon   November 1, 2024

Inanna knew owls growing up

The forests were thick then with dark & light

Openings from the ground would erupt into canopy

Fear was not unknown—shame was also known

They called to one another like young owls

Pre-dawn was the way of things for a long period

Just everything breathing out at a peaceful pace

All the shadows & shafts of planet spark colluding

Colluding on the whole big picture of opening the box

O, yes, the forest opening & the sky opening

All the breathing & stillness posed in open form

A weave of color poured steady into eyelets

Buttons composed of mildewed space & spider weave

Clasps & ringlets & a hundred thousand silver bracelets

Tinkling like dreaming rivulets of valley stream

They say the land is tricky in this place

How far you can see doesn’t begin to capture it

Then she began to descend from one painting to another

Like the hours-long birth of night, life went overboard

Details filled-up the cave opening & silted-in

The stairway downward—the sky ladders were lifted

Ways to elsewhere vanished into more ambiguous openings

Owls called all morning for the soulful release of it

Like yawning for a moon sinking into blackened butter

Her infinite yearning began again, as you know.

Poem by Qayyum Johnson.

Painting by Suiko McCall. Embrace the Territory, 2018. Gouache on Yupo, 31×35″. Private collection.