In the morning
I like to watch the trees,
and all through the day.
Lines on the trunk
as delicate as
the lines on my skin.
Dirt at the base
like the shadowy markings
on the bottom of my feet.
I take in a tree,
then I take to it.
The way its leaves
converse with sunlight
gleefully—smiling.
Sitting at their feet
like a pupil of Socrates,
I learn from the trees.
About stillness
running beneath the surface
like water beneath the ground.
Love and acceptance
all that I ever could be
In this place I visit often.

I am the invisible man
Ellison wrote about
haunting Edgar Allan Poe’s
subdued dreams.
Who carries a gift I did not ask for
staring take it back
into the faces of people
who treat my skin like parchment
and write stories on it
without my consent.

When a woman dies
we sense it
acutely.
The sting of a bumblebee
lingering in the long night
soft buzzings in the brain
vibrate with increased frequency
churning out spliced contralto cries
without cease.
Then the wound
which birthed a mark on your left ankle
splits open
and you fall, try to stand,
and you fall again
Backwards and down
like unwoven string
body strewn
along a second-hand couch
wide eyes
burning holes in the fabric
with questions perched on your lips

Sit with yourself and wonder
at the musings of the heart
soft tom-tom patterns
fluctuating
in the wirey veins of vessels.
Contracted tightly
at the seminal moment
of things undone.
Breathe breathe breathe
You are here
unkempt knots
loosed down your shoulders
rising with the tide.
Lay within the beach
dig deep into the sands.
In this scene
lost parables
and crustaceous creeds sinking,
stay that way.
Speckled grains
formless and void,
to be shaped
lined and caked
do these hands dare?

             Anwar Francis