Chant of Immediate Threats

Into geology of exile, home implodes.

The ground, incorrigible.

Ether shifting in its vicissitudes of letting go.

Somewhere, the karst.

Out and frayed apart decants the silt from another era.

I cannot keep you safe.

Without lianas or forests of laurel.

Without epiphytes on trees,

orchids rampant in the canopy.

Without a family of myrtles, thickets of woody bamboo.

Without plum yew, needlewood, podocarp.

Without Khasi pine, Fokienia hodginsii, Yunnan Youshan.

Without a family of sumacs, Pinus krempfii,

incense cedar, beech, and oak.

I cannot keep you safe.

I cannot bring you leaves on which to feed.

Schismatoglottis cochinchinensis.

Fissures draw a line through rocks.

A crisis digs until limestone cracks.

Dismantling granite. Sandstone.

Foliations in gneiss.

Spine of the Annamites breaks open.

Underneath, a crystalline basement evolves,

a hardened river flowing with basalt.

I cannot keep you safe.

These heights sharpen their teeth of jagged edges.

One step on the verge.

Another step bowing beyond vertiginous perimeters.

Bends of new gravel and guardrail set no speed

for smuggling away.

A highway knifes the greenscape.

I cannot keep you safe nor can I keep you safe.

By means of gravity.

By means of water through a penstock.

By means of a reservoir, a dam, a turbine

propelling creation toward a transformer.

By means of a river.

By means of a background exploding into shock.

New surges of electricity earmarked for export.

Mountains yield to hydropower.

I cannot keep you safe.

Can any one person?

Can any armor from the disease of paucity?

From cursed deficit counting you as less than one hundred?

I cannot keep you safe.

How to community. How to local. How to compliance.

How to transborder. How to enforcement.

How to mitigation.

I cannot keep you safe.

How to welfare to now to reverence to keep you safe.

How to revenant to remedy to keep you safe.

How to natural to sanctuary to here to keep you safe.

You, safe.
You, safe.