Source Waters in Home Lands
This morning I’d like to share three poems and pictures I recorded with a pond-stream back in Syracuse this July. As I mentioned in my previous post, there lives a stream that slows its way toward Onondaga Lake — slows so much, in fact, that I thought it a pond until I realized that it lets out into the Lake.
When I was a kid, we’d go for bike rides up and down Onondaga Lake Park and I would always stop to look at this pond-stream with dreamy child eyes. Observing and returning to this place was my most direct introduction to ecology, and I credit this humble hidden place with developing my environmental consciousness. When I returned this summer, I found this water and continued in my reverie. It felt good to pick up where child Darian left off.
These poems are part of a little manuscript that I am formatting into a map-style poetry zine. Progress on this zine, like the pond-stream, has slowed as I make space for gigs, other projects, classes, and sleep. . . Hoping that I can get it to print by mid-fall!
Anyways, enjoy these poems and pictures : )
Source waters in home lands
eye of water in my mouth
dust in my eye so I squint
each pond reflects the mud at its foot
mud advises against land and lake
mud seeps from the pond and cakes on my skin
each seepage is a blessing.
For how long behind my left ear did I take that mud with me?
For how long along the lake did water not swell in my eye?
For how long hid this source not mine, yet who I admire here
alone?
I want to ask if you recall me yet. I don’t need to know what words they used to fear me and how that fear was you when they planted lilies to hide your tepid back. I loved your tepid back and watched its liquid surface ripple after the initial shock of a fallen leaf. I don’t need to know who else stopped by to see the meaning inside your mouth — the secret source. I just need to know they did, and if you remember.
River runs with all that mud to stream.
Dragonflies flutter toward yet against the winds off each other’s wings to breeze.
Toad splashes into the stream with a mighty plop to mud.
Sunlight reflects onto the underside of leaves to dance.
Willow ran its way down the grass and stood there for a lifetime to flourish.
Weeds still grow here among the tiger lily to testimony
to the way things linger much longer than expected. 
Note: to view intended poem format, please view on desktop!