I don’t know where the mind goes or how it keeps time—
the icy lichen on the bark over there can seduce me
even as I’m floating up to the dark bird at the top
of the live oak and looking down at poor earthbound me,
stepping over scat fresh on the path since yesterday.
This morning I feel alone and small—shrunken,
full of porous bone. I miss those inches I’ve lost.
To the east, the tick-ridden deer on the hill are silhouettes,
majestic and black. The doe reaches down to the fawn.
for Obi Martin
Mammoth mammon-caged gatherings
are happening elsewhere. But we are here,
where we can be counseled to lean toward
whatsoever things are funny, small, astonishing,
oblique. Once the alphabet was magic,
once the leaves spoke a language
the wise heard behind their eyes.
Once a strange hand fisted clay into birds,
and images slipped from one mind to another
like breath, like wind, like electrons
slipping inside the airy hearts of protons
and out again, shaking out their fur.