What it feels like

1. You are standing in the ocean, thinking of robin songs and midnight rain
Your feet remain exactly 12 centimeters below the water
and in the glassy surface fluctuations
you bob up and down
like a derailed sowing machine
The gulls call and you slowly rotate


2. You are a layer cake, with mayonnaise substituted for icing
contradictory flavors held together in space and time
Spoiled, you are resigned to eat alone

3. You are a cat, charming a bird through a pane of glass
The awkward clucks you make do not find their target
But reflect back to the boy standing behind you

I wrote a poem to my dear love
I baked it into a pie
It sat upon a cooling rock
then floated into the sky

the king of fools

said to me:
I am a Prarie Chicken, a Whooping Crane
a boy with a bat, kicking the snow

The morning and night call out my name
and I unroll wildly into new topographies
I fold into the space between grains of sand
and stalk clouds hung high over saturday afternoons

I ride the winds, I fall on rains
I grow with the grass,
laugh at babies,
clap for thunder,

I have forgotten my own name
and ask you for a cigarette
I have spent all my money
on a sunrise
and burned my shoes
to celebrate heat and light

My body is all dusty bones
and rattling leaves
a wagon wheel and
a plaster floor

Where I go
you cannot follow
but I have been wrong
before