345. It Had Come upon Me an Instant Ago

First sunlight broken into shards
through the window across my lap
it all sliced into triangles parallelograms
blades of light

                             and heat it is as if
there were warmth to it or to be had
the road is quiet but not the cars upon it
only desperation serves as evidence of life
we grasp these braids of light

                                                   and pull
ourselves up right out of sleep and into
what a world of consciousness we cannot
abide far enough south and the trees
are almost full-leafed

                                    in feathery green
branches still coloring in and still allowing
sky to show through so that a gaze upward
leads to blue deeper than eggshell but not
deep

             the river wide at its mouth is muddy
dun languid it falls but so slowly it seems
in stasis attentive to waiting uninterested
in moving the blood moves

                                             through
the chest and veins a little buzzing in
a left hand or hand and arm reminds one
that the body goes numb eventually that
sleep is merely preparation for death so
close to the Atlantic I’d expect a seabird
above the jostling leaves

                                        song is not bird
but voice and who might sing between
these slices of sunlight cutting into
the dry crinkly skin of our hands and
a bit of shade hidden beneath the
dashboard

                    the mind grows logy
and weak within this enveloping
sunlight and its warmth expecting
redemption even if perdition is only
a small way off in sound or meaning
the roar that goes through the world
as this car cuts through the air is
the sound of wind being made the voice
of mere movement through

                                             twice
today angry at contention and desperate
for sleep I found the morning inhospitable
to my simple requirement my unreasonable
request for the machinations of the day
to leave me to my own thoughts and
inclinations every slope goes downhill
but also up

                     dare not I look up towards
that gaseous ball of flame in constant
combustion and dispersing heat for I wait
for moonnight a glow but cool not heat
itself or light but reflection

                                        the way
to think is to write without a word given
birth by voice or hand or a shape made
prominent or the feeling of a body dancing
through its irregular motions of a day
there is no thought

                                   burden of sunlight
and we are the beasts that bear it forward
or backward and always down and away
we do not remain in one spot or see distantly
that hawkspeck that could replace our need
for peregrination

                              we are corpuscles in flight
corpses of our future selves corpulent (bodily) and
given to sleights and feints the mind moves
quickly through its actions thorough calculations
of place and time and worth or viscous ruminations
at our simple pace or paces

                                             we are not beings
not even beens or will-be’s but thin flames of breath
rising invisibly out through the parting slip between
our lips in the form of a word a thought a voice

                                                                            the
only thing we lack is a reason to keep saying anything
at all.