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I is funny because it can be we
or us or me or them,
depending
on the swiftness of the dawn
as it interposes with the shadow
and the light reflected on gems
of raspberries in a glass bowl.

“Come with me,” she said.
He (that could also be I), followed
her (that could also be you)
up the slope until she stepped
into a loud column of rain
and turned and did a little
dance and told him to watch
his step and he stopped,

froze, leaning at the edge
of a great crack in the earth
so high above a floor
he could hear the rasps
of birds as they struggled
to stay level with the clouds
and with his heels before drowning.

He told himself he’d been a fool
to follow her here. Better
to be on a boat 100 thousand
years in mists where men
might still rise to greatness
and something more everlasting
than body counts and forgetmenots,
IOUs to galaxies or bones.

From the deep, he (that could be I) heard
cries for help clasped to the edges
of the birds’ wings. Hearing closer,
he saw that a thin gray dome
covered the gulf,
and he took up a stone
and cast it down, cracking
the glass this to the far edge,
releasing through the seam
thin tongues of steam,
but only for a moment
he heard the thin hiss,

only a moment because
you (or he or I or we) slipped in the mud
and she (who could be you
or we, but not us) reached down,
pulled him up, and said, “I told
you to be careful. See,
there it isn’t rain but here–yes–
it is, so be mindful of slipperiness
and grammatical miscalcula
and of that stone you might toss
into a chasm, cracking
the skin of the sky
when thinking
really matters to stop (us).”

He slipped, fell onto the glass
and heard the crack widen
as the sun painted fire
behind a spine-shaped
fence post perhaps fifty
miles distant, raw black
and splintery. He saw
clouds, birds, the sails
of ships, maybe whales,
beneath his hands and the crack
widened still.

He began a crawl back,
slow (it could be you or I),
and at the place where the glass
met the stone (where safety
met updraft) he found
a bend in the path,
small human imprints
turning, and he followed,
because between them he saw
the heavy impressions
of bear and what might
be tiger closely knotted
in the soft surface of the trail.

“Go,” she said. “Follow.
I wont protect you (I or we).
Mud is one thing,
glass roofs and heights another.
Watch closely for shadows,
sniff for things feral,
toothy, and red burrowed
in the green,
cinquefoil, beebalm,
or violet in the heat
of worry. See children
with their hands
on the backs of bears.
A round tiger’s eye
beneath a leaf. A
nd Run.”

Or:

I saw the dragonfly and he saw me
Too many red suns and salad to swallow
And we went our own wee

I imagine 100 thousand years ago.
I lift a car in my palm and watch it ride.
The woods fly past like chasing zebras, me immobile (really),
seated, glass down. The moon and sun break
through the clouds, erecting history in the shadows
of stones, papers, and knives.

100 thousand years ago I aim rope at a point
(heave and pull) and ride fast the yellow, slope land
on the back of broken glacier ice.
With my hand high, I slice the clouds into six elements
painted rainbow by evening.

A man will watch these trails (maybe in Vermont
maybe in the desert) 100 thousand years forward at a river bank,
from the edge of a desert gorge, the heat rises on butterfly backs,
as he imagines 100 thousand years ago. Again and again.

A woman with light in her mind rests her chin
on the sill watching the wind fall like doves
to rest on the flowers in her beds. She wonders
about the language of rats, so he (being nearby) shows her
by rushing onto the lawn, drawing a brush out of his pack,
and with a “see here, please” raises the bristles to the air
to fill it heavy and thick. Dripping with sun, he cores
the centers so that light passes through and paints the lawn
with the outline of roses, verbena, and penta.
Out to the fence line, propagating like doilies at the feet
of the stones and trees, leaping leaf to leaf, and the grass
withdraws behind an invention of scatter webs
and when the wind flocks the shadows whisk
beneath the window and over the house like rag clouds
happy at tag. She says, “I didn’t know rats had such thoughts.”
The rat smiles, hides the brush away. The clouds quit the yard,
and the wind, called elsewhere, rises from the flowers like birds.

We followed a midday city sidewalk.
She paused, grasped a brass newel that reflected
highrise windows and the sun across the way.

“You must be tired from carrying that box,” I said.

She smiled. “It is heavy,” she said.
At a stoplight, I asked, “Tell me what’s inside the box.”

She said, “When I first opened the lid, I was in October
and the air was cold and clear to the top of the mountain.
But inside the box was black.

Soon, I saw a small blue germ rise from a distant edge.
It became a grain of coral sand,
a happy woman’s eye at dawn. Then it burst
and became hydrogen pumped to life by neutron stars,
a blue sun larger than the eye of a deep sea fish,
the face of a dragonfly,
a grain of coral sand.
I remember most of all the nebula.
Keep that.”

We crossed the street.

“I won’t give it up,” she said.
“I won’t give it up.”

She settled into a cab, the box on her lap.
She carried a universe under green lights,
a sun burning the windows of the city.

So

out of the bud
in the many greens
a dove is released
into night.

But that’s not all.

Every shadow
may be a still image
repeated, the surface
of a child’s motion
glad under water,

And

Blackness two plums
colliding in a sound-proof room

And

a blue seep on a wall,
in any country with walls,
may be last year’s
violets or the furious
purple under
the clouds
before cloud burst.

Moreover,

the small lights
we see in the yard
making the silentest
blue strings
may be space
folding, drawing
two light bulbs,
one in China, one Mexico,
to touch. For their
brief time together
they become firefly,
intertwingled and brief.

We see blue bits falling
and take them for bluejays
at the feeders,
lost balloons, the sound
of weeping
in another room.
Laughter on river boats.

Therefore,

that one lilly
at sunset is the afterimage
of a dove, or a wave,
long gone into tomorrow.

The unblinking condition of the moon should give us pause.
Because somewhere in some space an eye will never close,
ever lubricated, and a finger will always be moist with paint.
As was once said, the moon is buoyant eggshell on the pond
at night, an eye that will never stop following you down
the mooned road under stars where off across the silver field
an army crouches. All you hear is the wind, a faint sigh
carried from a garden you remember, and the sky grows
over you like an idea you once had of living inside a whale.
For some reason, the inside of a whale, you remember,
is night sky luminous. The gut of a whale is planetarium.
And so you start off once more, with footsteps in your ears
journeying inside the safety of the whale’s belly. The wind
dims, the army watches with moons in their eye sockets,
and you carry–arrangements, gardens–down the silver road.

or

The unblinking condition of the moon should give us pause.
Because somewhere in space an eye will never close
and a finger will always be moist with paint.
As was once said, the moon is buoyant eggshell
on the pond at night, an eye that will never stop
following you down the mooned road under stars
where off across the silver field an army crouches.
All you hear is the wind, a faint sigh
carried from a garden you remember
with green moons orbiting and the sky grows
over you like an idea you once had of living inside a whale.
For some reason, the inside of a whale,
you remember, is night sky luminous.
The gut of a whale is planetarium.
And so you start off once more, with footsteps
in your ears, journeying inside the safety
of the whale’s belly. The wind
dims, the army watches with moons in their eye sockets,
and you carry–arrangements, gardens–over the powdered road.

5.
The stone found himself
purplestriped by grass shadows.
Feline strokes that make one wonder
at the shapes roots make underground.
Pale letterforms creeping beneath the stone. (fin)