I remember the pain.
Now a thought, like a pillar
cracked down the centre
holding a roof that leaks
into the basement.
I listen for
the tiny letters
the steps of mice
write in stone.
I feel a draft this evening.
I felt for more, of course,
a river,
the bright black hair
of the sun cooling my ankles
into pain,
no, not this pain,
this
idea of braille
as falling snow
burning into eyes.
The stick the length of me,
lifted by the beach,
skinned, bleached
by gnaw of weather
and beaver, too,
stripped of younger branches
until the end, an antler now,
almost, as if the body lay just
beyond. Its possible journeys
are what I see now, battles for
the sake of finding one, but landing
on this island anyhow –
which makes it into another thing,
after all, this burning leap
of sudden purpose, like
an antelope perhaps, dancing
for the fire.
The stick the length of me,
lifted by the beach,
skinned, bleached
by gnaw of weather
and beaver, too,
stripped of younger branches
until the end, an antler now,
almost, as if the body lay just
beyond. Its possible journeys
are what I see now, battles for
the sake of finding one, but landing
on this island anyhow –
which makes it into another thing,
after all, this burning leap
of sudden purpose, like
an antelope perhaps, dancing
for the fire.
november 3
No stars, geese low, traveling south.
You feel that your body in darkness is
another life.
It rubs lightly past the faint window
of your room, an image, still,
skimming water between morning
and the southerly transmigration of dreams.
Closing the glass, it whistles a thought,
sleepily, but you,
your lips rest, and hum another thing.
You think of birds.
Something tells me, I should live.
For what? Every day, I feel in me
the words dwindle,
and hear the new tongue of the breath,
as it meets me in the elevator,
or at the light when it’s gone yellow,
and then red. Breathing is involuntary,
it mouths, again and again. But the heart
is not. It is the sun.
The breeze speaks for it when it is gone.
Wait, it says.
Isle of Hoy 