i met a beatific elder on the greyhound

on the way to pittsburgh he told me his six principles of love:

1. love includes everyone in the world no exceptions
2. love is free
3. love is easy
4. love is 24-7   you can’t shut it off   it has two on buttons
5. let everyone think the opposite but love them anyway
6. love is offered in the freshness of the moment   there’s no past in love

in allegheny national forest

oil pumps go all night
trails crossed by logging roads
sound of guns & drilling
echoes thru ancient bird song woods

in green green light
we walked thru path
flooded by beaver dam
took our shoes off and became the water
went where no cars go

help me make it a feminine town where we blend and give

i’ll be the coywolf in shadows
watching from the knotweed like no one
praying from pipeline trenches
doing whatever the goddess tells me
blessing the awol soldiers
petals of roses in fumes
blue jays in concrete
camouflaged in birch
breath of the workers and buses
blood full of barges
bathed in the spit of the people
planes turned to perfumed rain
bums under starlight bridges
pollen our only sustenance
i’ll be the coywolf
where the heart has no borders