the moon had a fingernail-split underline and
there, in small heights, you could hear the sea
from anywhere. the lamps cast shadows from
objects that were, and are always, beautiful and
ugly. a lone soft life, calling, from out over grass
& then in, rippling through the curtains.
and, there in my bones, was the familiar ache:
the vastness of the ocean, its comprehensibility
appearing only in glimpses as each other fibre
untangled. little warm dissolution. comforting
tiny mutability of the world, and all its associated
weights. laid down in so many russet fields, was
each time-kept glance, gone-stale motion,
fervent belief, or undenied hope:
the breadth of humanity
lay, still.
the world was and is and will, for ever, be
the backlit glow of sunrise over a picture-book
we chose colours for, and reference, followed
by names and indices: here, the paint peeling,
the rain, settled on long grass outside of the kitchen,
the undiscoverable full fear and joy of living,
the cluttered expanse of patterns in the chaos.
the light we only see with half-open eyelids, as
the skyline burns from ahead or behind.
and i firmly insisted i was lying or
standing here, that my eyes were
closed or lying to their ordinance;
that there was nothing but more or
less to life, and that it was not my
decision, anymore, and sat cross-
legged in either sun or snow, and
it did not matter which, at all, for
i had no compass to find bearing, no string
to twist between fingerprints and tie
knots like milestones, just the lasting
impression of my own impossible and
shining inevitability. in the dust of river-
beds or the debris of sanctity, insects
broke down my flesh and the unbroken
rays of sunlight bleached my bones and
finally, all else burnt down& out, the
meaning of life precipitated from an
empty sky, running streams over the
cracked surface.
the soil set to loam,
and the dried roots engorged, so swollen
that gravel once again became sand, and
canopies burst from everything: in the
array, in my emptiness, there was still
nothing to know, and my ferned jaw
turned upwards to know, as part of all,
that i, too, was meaning, and i woke,
on a park-bench,
in the streams of the momentary dawn
that punctuate the endless night, as
a mother puts child, sweetly, to rest.
so, finally,
hook was cast into sea or
pick was cast into ground and
life, in its infinite meaninglessness,
struck another second-hand and
bundled its arms tight around,
in this season without relent.
and i, at once, knew:
for all the stars, stuck in that firmament,
or cloudlines, unalgebraically shuffling
against that paling blue, those i'd been lost in;
the uncountable nights and days spent toiling
in bliss and woe, for each unfurling front,
i was not forgetting a single iota, but
simply recollecting all i'd so long lost.
out where dawn and dusk touch lips