Distance

That row of houses splits
sky from water as a thought divides
a moment into a memory.
The space between the trees
is for the fox to slip between
and the area around the fox
is for the trees and wind to fill.
Clouds weigh on average
about five elephants, and all
around them is weightless.
There is always room for more.
The American Promise. Here,
even clouds can’t just be themselves,
we must see ourselves in them.
All those molecules are eyes, nose, lips,
just the right proportions, to be us.

Last night, I filled the openness
of our living room with a Bengal tiger.
It wasn’t enough to have the space
around the sofa and cold television.
In its pace, there was more detached ennui
than stalking. It floated once
through the ottoman and a pile of books,
unable to see through its sadness
where it was going.

The distance between my face
and your face is a filter.
Apply fox eyes, and a bright burnt sienna
blaze becomes you, as an old woman shouts,
“Get out of here! You’re beautiful!”
Run. Become an atom,
the distance between clouds.

Self-Portrait as a Butterfly Leaving

The wind is he
who comes to blow away our footprints. 

    -- from Southern Bushmen’s Song

Now it is 6:47 a.m. Dark panes.
Do not check email.
I wish to stay in my cave of questions
but the bodies of trees are already visible.
Soon all my thoughts will be too.

I’ve overeaten poetry in the dark again.
Not one more nibble of a poem of love, dying,
or the sun rising over the hills as it is now,
the traitor. I once thought her free speech of fire
was only inside of me, for my growth.

Can I just stay here
in the office of butterflies,
with its memos of moss and lichen?
A good swagger of wind leaves us
staggering in the grass, caught
on tree branches. Do not mistake us.
We don’t wish to linger, but remind
as you scroll, archive, and delete,
that leaves should stay green.

Remember caterpillars, air, whole trees
full of insinuating, intimate conversations,
rumors, murmurs, susurrations.