The mantras swim and barely respond
to the limbs and hands that invade their pond
“Be the change you want to see in the world,” more laps

cramped up laps, collect the birch fluid, boil it, everyone claps
“May all beings be happy,” for you have made syrup out of saps

The hands track to touch – they remove the protective slime from leathery wings
Does it irritate the mantras?
“Accomplisher of the sublime,” the caged fish sings
The rays
The beams
Their wings

On a cold morning with a halo of ice crusting the edge of the panes
And ribbons of fog extending outward like roots or veins
I press my fork through the cakes so they give way
Drowned in syrup like the coins at the bottom of the bay
I think of the mantras swimming in circles; creatures of divinity
For unlike me, they live, respire, and know
the meaning of infinity

[Featured Image: Interior of Fure’s Cabin by the National Park Service]

As babies we were held skin to skin
(Perhaps why the feeling is so distantly familiar
Like the tune of a music box you heard as a child
Like simple words sung at night
Like the sound of a voice through a tin can on a wire
Like the sound of the birds in your hometown)
It is a transfusion of sunlight
It is better than a campfire
It is the feeling of being a lamp-lit drifting dust mote on
A breeze
You carry the weight of the earth
But have the translucency and lightness of a photon

The ant has latched on to my ankle bone
Pincers like the universe
Developing venom
The ants
I’ve always been tune averse, too nervous
But this venomous music has caught me alone
And I have to dance. 

Emerged raw, blistered in viscous pearl. Lying
On honey crystal sand by the clapping sea
Sighing hearts carry me
Into the ancient maw of the earth
Skin knits anew
I come out black velvet and dip into the pitch-velvet sky
Watched by the singular 
Eyes
The melody congealed and I walked it
Up to the rest
Arcs of white, plumes of white fire
Circling out and up and around and in
Close in enough and I am there
Reading a book 
in a pocket in
The arc harvest nearest the sun 

Infinite spheres of light burn deep within the skies
And almost all are hidden from my eyes
It’s only after darkness washes through
I see a few.

back in the daytime I saw one. 
I used to think that truth was like the sun
And I was bronzed and
then my planet spun.

I’m on a hilltop just above the shadowed trees
Chilled by the dew and by the evening breeze 
Fiercely studying the stars, the sky, 
and rustling leaves are echoing me: Why?
Why was most of it a 

;;;

Some days I am the cobblestone that’s loose 
The faltered word, the almost-truce
The stone that skips and ripples glassy water
The stubborn clay that irritates the potter

Some days I am the starting raindrop of a storm
Racing towards an earth that’s void and without form
Not knowing if there’s anyone behind me

;;;

after the land had been encased in shells of ice
spring came. So I buried my face in the grass 
and breathed and let gravity pull me 
until I felt like 
the little being that I was, hugged against the side of a great spaceship
hurtling through the universe

I walked with fireflies on the haze 
which glows dull orange, lit below,
by city lights that gleam and blaze
the color of a fire on snow.
the satellites sketch lonely ways
and dust burns in the atmosphere
a fitting death of sparks and rays - 
dust travels far to die out here.
its monochrome gives way to hue
my sky dissolves from black to blue
these miles remind me of what’s true 
I know the gray now, through and through.

[Featured Image: Descent of the Soyuz TMA-14M by Bill Ingalls]