‘Puts Me to Work’ echoes through the house,
Cate Le Bon’s voice bouncing off the walls.
I can almost see it, storming down the hallway,
Barging out of the bathroom.

This floor is ******* freezing.

I can see my reflection in the shiny wood;
A circle of condensation that grows and shrinks
As I breathe in and out.

‘But I know that you’re there,
‘cause you’re making it hurt.’

Entire galaxies are swirling in the shaft of setting sunlight
Streaming through the broken blinds
At right angles, sharp and sudden.
Solar systems shift and spiral,
Exploding every
Time I take a breath.

A lake is forming by my chin.
I wonder if it is clear and wet
Like swimming,
Or white with froth and paste
Like winter.

I stop wondering when the shivering becomes me.

‘It puts me to work . . . puts me to work.
It puts me to work . . . it puts me to work.’

The song has been repeating for an hour now.
I used to really like the end.
Something like forty-five-minutes-ago.

I wonder if the battery will die soon.

I wonder not if I will die soon.
Preoccupied with galaxies and spirals and the little spot of condensation
Forming and unforming as I breathe.
With the frozen lake I feel cold enough to be skating across
In these baggy shorts and this tattered t-shirt
From a Nirvana show last century.  

The battery doesn’t die, and Cate Le Bon comes racing around the house again.

I close my eyes and sigh.

Penelope must have felt this way.
Weaving in the morning,
unweaving at night.
This threadwork of colors
forming, unforming
rolling, unrolling
running stitches, leaving holes,
loose, loose tiny holes.

I begin our story,
stop midway. Wasting
ink. Wasting
paper. Killing
trees. Hanging
my right hand in the air. Creaking
the door is. Only
it is the wind.

Holding out until your homecoming.

Round,  wavewashed rocks
strewn upon a beach of sand
Becoming strong, granite cliffs
rising above an ever rolling sea
of tall grass, borne on wide-open prairie
drawing towards itself eagles of all kinds
and ocean-bound egrets, their bellies
filled, with fish
the windborne silts  of distant lands,
finding refuge in the crags
filling in the years, of ancient definition
and throughout aeons, of forming
and unforming within the wild
brutal winds:  grinding, pulverizing
granite, back down to pebble
majestic prairie, back in to sand..
and then, back down  into
windblown silt

now circling around the feet of a child,
(one that pokes at dead things  with a stick)

But within the silt, are the pebbles
and so, down on her knees  she forms
a pile with her hands.. an ancient burial mound,
stands up, and with a clap of her
little hands, wipes a millenia of dust away
stick, tucked under arm-- she walks away:

as silt-covered pebble, become  once again

Round,  wavewashed rocks
strewn upon a beach of sand
Becoming strong, granite cliffs
rising above an ever rolling sea
of tall grass, borne on wide-open prairie

Drawing towards itself eagles of all kinds
and ocean-bound egrets, their bellies
filled, with fish
(the wind borne silts  of distant lands,
finding refuge in the crags
filling in the years, of ancient definition....)