you are still
here thinking
floods or
flashes in or on and the day
as you must live it
begins. An invisible clock
unlike the visible one in every respect
begins. The visible
one never
stops, this
one is yours,
personal,
your lifelong exile from some other place the wallpaper of
the given
masks—
endeavor, price, the cosmetics of
class hunger apple falling
not far from
tree—species category, desire
for right of return (to what)—all so strong in one, an echo that will
not stop, fleshy echo,
you with your
calf now stepping
down off the ledge of
sleep.... Laugh says the light. Do it right now, you can
still save yourself. But you can't hear. Own
it, fill it, clear all
pathways says the
brain, but it is
like water
flowing through you, you let it go, you seek a place
to be like stone but
even the shadow under the
stone will not
have you—be born says the slipper you step
into, it takes so
little, this left leg
with its muscles in
reach, bring in the right one, stand—squint or you
will see the air's all
scars, all ancient and
up-to-the-minute
scars, it's been
ripped open by the mind, but never mind say the two
slippers you
can move out in us, you
can glide
through this so-called thin air, your body is your deed
of ownership for
your given
days, your gaze you
can hold
up, a
lantern in the judgment-fattened
dark, but see you
cannot see
the lucent skin
dark wears so it
looks just like day. Good morning. Be balletic,
noble, act out
the little mercies,
the fondness, the sensation of acceptable risk, the children
are being readied, the shadows
are shortening,
the ball of yarn's
raveling, you feel it in the hollow of your palm
as you now use
your hand to
touch—their head their
face, the mouth, shut eyes—how fast the ball
is tugging now, how much new yarn just these few words
let loose, sea-
current, through
the chasm—so blue—the eye of the needle, the
narrow slit, the
end it
goes into whoosh are
their lunches ready, quick, their books
their bikes their sacks on
their backs the sand
you watch flow through them in drifts of
grains as they kiss and
push off
into the stinging
sequence of
events—and the yarn will not tangle, no,
not even one knot
for one fraction of
an instant
snag, to let the mountain be the mountain out
the window and not
erode, to have the
mind on this side
of the window gleam, where the steam from the cleaning up of
dishes rises and
there
is the dream of never going or being left
behind, the dream
glowing where light
touches the pane of the heroic and is wiped away, just like that,
and the pebble creeps into the shoe,
and the outset being a wide place one cannot
cross, it whispers sit
down
refuse identity be a
shut mouth
in a smile
wide as the whole abyss—
