after Bernardino de Sahagún’s “Definitions of Earthly Things”
Blood
A mountain stream inside a breathing sack. A palm and some garnets.
Feet
For climbing mountains. For bedding grass. For being, upright. For being apart. For meditating; bedding dirt. For conversation with roots. For conversation. For dancing, dancing on wooden floors, dancing on pebbles, in water, not in water. For softness and for roughness. Dancing. For conversation through dancing. For bedding grass. For being where being has gotten to.
Knees
For prayer. For proving smallness. For proving smallness. To catch grace and place it in dirt, to touch dirt. To prove smallness. To kiss mountains with small mountains, with grace.
Spine
To have roots. To sizzle and burst. To sway. To be still. Mosaic of gravity and motion. Tower of being. To be. To crunch and glide. For gliding. For trusting and gliding and swimming and bending toward up. For bending toward up. For twisting and being. For being a tower. Leaning tower, high tower, vibrating tower, up, up. Tower of being; being up. Bone puzzle. Tree body. For being a tree.
Hands
For making. For holding. A claw foot tub. For wringing, for stringing, for work. For planting, for stories. Creases like leaf veins, like soft paper, like string. A claw foot tub. Like spiders, like mud. Cupping rain. To touch. To know. Little cups. To cup rain in little cups.
Heart
Dialect of touch, of coming close to. For speaking. For uncovering. For seeing, for taste. For laughter. Act and art of reason. Dialect of reason, of speech. Gateway. Genesis. An amethyst chair. Waves inside cut trees; seed code. Skin rhythm. Blood dancer. Dialect of the body.
Neck
Paper crane. Head stilt. River. To lift, to turn, to drift. Swan dive of the spine. Extension, swivel, stem. Up and around. To bend around, to glance up. To glance at stars, at canyons, at hands. Hinged tower. Small trunk. Punctuation of a river, of perhaps.
Mouth
Locket of the body. To question, to direct, to conquer, to fall. The open and the close. The big and the minute. For questioning, for song, for silence. To be silent, to press together, to accept. Humble. Humble. Teachable. Sound. To move with. Locket of open and close, of gesture, of maybe.
Nose
Canal. Didgeridoo. Painted scale. To pull and push air. To puppet current. To pull in. A pyramid. To press into and against. To press essence. To catch; to hold. To press into and against essence.
Ears
Knots in the belly of a tree; in the canopy. Echo-catchers. Shells. Ceramic bowls. To clutch sound in ceramic bowls. Breakable bowls. Breakable shells. Mouths. Bent like hot rocks, curled leaves. Bent around. Clutching the tidal day.
Eyelashes
Small, great fans; great, small fans; dust fans. For catching dust. Dust and joy and too much, too much. To catch the heaviness. To protect the soothsayers, the seeing sockets. To cradle dead skin taken flight, dead skin that dances, dust, dust, the dusty Earth. To catch the dusty Earth. The too much.
Mind
To be and to be and to be, in and out and always: fluttering. To flit and kiss light. To kiss light and sink into and accept. Fire and bone. To glow, for glowing, for growing. To be sung. Awake. Open. To be sung awake and open. To stay and go and both and know the difference and the same. Seeing in darkness. Being darkness, being fire. In and out and always. Being always. Being circles. Being trees. Fluttering like stars, like fish, like knowing. Being stars. To touch light. To echo. To sing and be sung.