RISER
“I’m strong enough to hold you through the winter / Mean enough to stare your demons down / The hard times put the shine into the diamond / I won’t let that keep us in the ground”*
//
The first dream was fire.
We were in the pasture — a wild-built place,
heap of trailer homes
all connected at their doors.
*
There was no way in,
and no way out,
but through the window
I could see them.
*
And this time I knew:
What was coming
would consume us all.
//
I knew,
but not how to reach them,
to warn them,
to move them.
*
So I held her in my arms,
my daughter—named for the wolves
we knew were still listening.
*
And I whispered
each time I crossed a threshold:
I will not drop you.
*
I will not lose your tiny body
into that sliver of darkness
just below my feet.
*
The place between places,
where so few of us dare look.
//
We were not exactly human.
We were unfathomable, light, transcendent.
*
That was the second dream — a deep breath, a knowing.
*
It was not our imaginations
that built this world,
but this world
is where we found ourselves.
*
Living inside their dream—
just as our grandchildren,
and great-grandchildren
will live inside ours.
//
Hypnopompia:
a dream upon waking.
*
My grandmother in the garden,
tears flowing toward the sky.
*
This is not the time to run.
This is the place to start digging.
//
First, excavate your body.
Then, unbury mine.
*
On all fours in the mud is how we’ll do it.
You inside me, your hands inside my mouth.
*
Pulling out the words one syllable at a time,
like rotten teeth
we’ve been ashamed to lose.
//
And I am bleeding again,
without ceremony.
*
Your hands are rough,
but somehow
they come out clean.
//
This is what she meant by resurrection:
Our redemption.
*
The shore of Lake Superior.
The beach she called her church.
*
Looking farther than we ever could,
her feet in the water—too warm now
for any fish we could name.
//
Because while we were living
inside their dream,
we could not imagine
a way to stop them.
*
They came with the movement of oil,
the unwise burning,
the raping of earth,
and our shallow breath.
//
I held tightly to her hand,
my granddaughter.
Just as I’d dreamt
my grandmother held mine.
*
Her fingers were wrapped around my wrist,
pulling me back to that shoreline,
a jagged edge
grace washes over.
//
I was held like this,
until the bones in my hand
began to crack,
and I saw that it was abuse
we could not resist.
*
In each of those cracks
she left a map,
a strand of herself
that will never be unraveled.
*
It is mine,
and it is hers.
*
It is yours.
*
It is ours.
//
It is a promise,
a way back.
*Lyric from Dierks Bentley, Riser. One in an ongoing series of pieces written after listening to, and reimagining, Top 40 Country Songs.
