sometimes day starts in round middle
of thin night. with no hip for hand
to home itself upon, your beginning stretches
threadbare and trembling taut. your day was one of moving
earth, gravel, root and berry. your feet seek
purchase, firmament offering the sly grin of protection,
security, assurance. illusion, this is the dream you did
not have in thin night’s round middle,
when you woke to barren bed’s warmth
and in absence of homing hip
placed bare feet on grain of your wood
floor. the floor felt firm
and you were quaking, the eagle outside
was yet to set itself to shrieking and you returned
to yesterday’s clothes in preparation for tomorrow’s
impossibilities. today began last night and continued
as you moved earth, gravel root and berry. Blue
berry rolled fat and sheen’d in dream down
newly torn forest path. Gravel piled upon
berry and it is given a chance to bury
in dormancy, to imagine itself again ripe. Jesus
walked on water and that’s about as much
footing as you can hope to acquire as you tread
water with kicking feet, wondering at letting your head slip
beneath ocean’s unhurried offer. your taut day started
in thin middle of gaunt night, you today moved
earth to construct path and now you admire berry
blue, silent beneath gravel in its flourishing
forest of bush and root and you might just dip your head
beneath the water on which Jesus walked so that you might
cautiously step out onto the howling of groundless
path, you might just dip your head
under water and perhaps when you re-emerge round
and ripened you might be one breath
closer to a place where you relinquish your terror
of erasure.
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