On Peripheries

First, I was on an island, a surface
retreating from its sense of edge

I accumulated myself to confront
the cosmos. My thought makes me

reel. All those other trees are walking.
In the context of the world

shrinking, an airplane hurries
the shoulds toward sounds.

I Smile Unknowingly Like Air

The efforts of the phenomenal universe
and our bodies shine forth not unpleasantly.

I like air anyway and I can see from inside
my head darkness is silence faking out

the landscape. For example, my ancient
worries make beautiful promises.

They explode next to other possible views.
It is a difficult and strange phenomenon

how even now I’m plucking details from
what is, as if a sky could discard small portions

of itself aptly shaped for being lost. A fragment
of air collides with its counterpart.

A gateway-spark wishes to glitter and scatter
like instances of thought.

After Traveling Across a Blankness in the Imagination

A mind of trees streams voluminously. The same
orange light approaches a stone wall. Detached
thoughts travel rapidly. I can’t split longing

from the water it moves in me, grieving the leaves’
lost veins. Landscape is mind with persistent voice.
Small, unmarked roads, blank backdrop of tumbleweed
and emaciated antelope. No word for dirt.

Green is the Main Thing

Some worlds are flat. When I reach
out into space, I stretch the seam
where air touches my center
of gravity. I cultivate my own
texture of grass, at a distance.
Wind fans the sides

of buildings.
My answers tucked in my wing pits
my rule, keep moving. I no longer
read or write, higher than I have
the means to rise. I have only been
a bird this long, since I left my
first ground.

Future

Another door closing.
Inside my head

a steam radiator
the whine of metal        spitting heat

toward a view of a courtyard.
So grand and nostalgic        a city rises

to clouds        no one
gathers to greet.
Who remembers this?