How To Live Creaturely

(A Sound Design)

What happens
when the torches
burn down

to the horn
to the hair
to the head
to the bone beneath.

It is when you are asking about something
that you realize
you yourself have survived it.
The wound remains.
The hunger remains.

Shame.
Shame vibrates.
Coldness
and blushing.
Before the eyes of others.
Facing oneself.

A bee dozing by in spring.
Shame
waters it
with river dews.
Shame vibrates.
Gods remain a problem.

Here, have an olive.
What is mortality after all
but divine doubt
flashing over us?

For an instant
God suspends assent
and poof.
We disappear.

Have an olive.

Behind me somewhere
if I turned around
I could see my daughter
beginning to climb.

My daughter.
Not quite human.
Or perhaps
a little beyond human.
Hand over hand.
Like a little gold animal
in the morning sun.

That is who we are.
Creatures moving
on a hill.

Grace that cannot be contained.
Grace circulates.
Passed
between hands.

Like an olive.
Like a name.
Like a garment.
Like a daughter.

There are days
it is foggy in Venice.
You cannot quite see
the person
you are following.

But you can hear
the feet. TAP
TAP TAP
There he goes.
TAP TAP

TAP
Or is she behind you.
TAP TAP
TAP

Perhaps
you are following
yourself.

Creatures moving on a hill.
Moments of death.
Wing-growing necessity.

Only the gods know
the reason why things are.
We only feel them
swoop through our insides.

The actor goes down there
for you.
Into the pit.
Into the grief.
Into the rage.

Into the dark.
Violence occurs.
That is all it is.

And yet.
A daughter climbs.
A bee enters the field.
An olive passes between strangers.

A wing grows.
A creature keeps moving.
Hand over hand.
Like a little gold animal
in the morning sun.

That is who we are.
Creatures moving on a hill.