1
*
There is always a first
head that you draw
with two
eyes no
mouth yet
arms and legs no
hands and feet. There is
always a first
mouth that appears
in the slapdash
head without
speaking
though you quickly
learn that
this
is how smiles are drawn
how sadness seems.
**
Even when the nest
is a mishmash
of chance
findings
the egg gets laid
and breaks
in the end.
What you’re after is
not the shell
that protects you
but a frail
brokenness: daring
that movement
without awareness of
repetition boredom
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2
*
There is always a first
doubt: what for. Knocked at the gods’ door, but
they were not in, had other hassles to manage: grass
that modified, suddenly denigrated its roots, wanted no more to do
with them, air was enough for it. I dug and dug in the earth
constantly finding under and under but once exhumed it became
a mountain where each answer every surprise
had to find itself among the others.
Then I went walking in wind and into a light
that did not cease as long as I walked in that light
as long as it skimmed over my earth. It had
no above or below, no left or right, nowhere
a middle, I could not put my hand on it, it laid
itself on my hand and my head and slipped sparkling
from under my feet when I tried to walk over it.
**
We were the sun at the noon hour
sat in Utopia’s shadow, told one another
stories about how it was and still is with a future
so directly in front of your feet that you could trip on it.
We pointed to a butterfly trying to find nectar
in plastic, grotesque mythical creatures and
kept the children off limits. One said:
we’ve gone along with now for so long that we’ll surely
know what’s best, another promptly objected.
We ate frivolously with our fingers because we found
that knives and forks were out of place in that airy entourage.
So it grew later, we found ourselves in growing
shadow, still had further to go to touch warmth
again and light that still was, still was far from.
***
One day so much tree lay in the water
that it touched the bottom, fish
got stuck in its foliage. Decided to move
the branches aside, to walk over between the leaves.
Sun was already chafing against late summer while
it began to get windy. I held on tight, wavering nearly
blowing me down, and I wondered what forgetting looks like
on the other side: x to the power of I wouldn’t
know. Kinderszenen, and around me
a dusk developed slowly, trying to blacken
the birds: silhouettes racing past
in search of a place to sleep.
And the voices that skimmed across the water already sounded
more vague, more singsong, almost a day more stricken in age.
