Here’s a floating seashell,
an island where sounds coil
into the center,
where gang wars or prank wars roil
among the giant black wordsters,
ravens or crows
are having it out, falling upon my roof
like waves on the beach.
A tall dandelion stretches
like an ancient tree,
lording above the young
sunflowers,
newly planted.
I wonder how or if I
must explain
that even when I resemble
the indolent cat,
I am busy doing important work.
For a painter or a poet,
the pauses in the day are the
noisiest for ideas.
The work is done most efficiently
at the strangest hours, 10 or 11pm,
when most people are beginning
sleep. I’m staring like a
knot on the oldest tree of the city, into
the seeming empty air,
seeing worlds borne
in misty visions,
placing and adjusting
and coloring the pieces in a world
where someone else will live,
constructing nests with
detritus, soft and hair-like,
wound about in numbers
with spit and earth,
a lasting throne of safety
for the nurturing of young life.
Now, while my head is sleeping,
while my body struggles with the business
of moving in the world,
a melody is undulating
beneath the soil, roiling up
in new energy towards a
heavily cottoned sky, a
thickly smothering morning
blanket, in between spaces
of busy and asleep, marches,
monuments, and beating sunshine.
This Spring has been the most
restful and cool I can recall,
at least since I was very young.
It echoes the very best days of the
season.
I recall why I
chose it as mine, why I
decided the Spring was
the time I felt
best, the cool damp of
the air, the light and
constant breezes,
perfect for layering comfortable
shirts and long pants
and running barefoot in
wet grass.
Dreaming is my serious work,
reflecting is the shape of my molecules,
the essence and
purpose of my being.
I am soil in which
strange things are unfolding,
green and white and gold
petals are born from nonexistence
and stretch out in patterns of
infinity.
Growing is my real purpose,
and it is imperceptible,
to some it isn’t fast enough,
to some, results are expected
immediately
and quickly forgotten
completely,
but there is no
hurrying the pace of nature,
and deciding the conditions
of growth is pre-ordained
in a giant book of natural law,
I like to imagine
floating in the black of
endless space,
bolts of current flowing
from it to all corners of
existence on this plane,
a great and wondrous
machine of witchcraft or
technology so advanced it
is barely grasped as real,
not at all understood or explainable.
