Trees rehearse
the gestures of fire.
“This is how we will burn,”

Bemusement was the better part of sanity,
And sanity was your glance past the surly
Occasion to the sheer morning or moment

Any tourist will tell you:
Envisioning is our medicine.
I, too, hope to see what I can’t see.

Cynical millenarian, I like
You in this shot, posed without
Insignia or emblems,

Putting a burden down feels so empty
you almost want to hoist it up again,
for to carry nothing means there is no “me,”

Never so deeply in love as I am
have I been,
never so nourished by touch as I am

Broken lines continue, you know, way past
their breaks, as medians in roads do, or
the dot tracings in kid’s books, where the last

It doesn’t speak and it isn’t schooled,
like a small foetal animal with wettened fur.
It is the blind instinct for life unruled,

Beyond the mountain is a meadow with iris.
The shade of the firs determines the measure
of their color. Violet so pale the purple

Then a man comes easily through the trees
with some urgent duty, like Hermes with his orders
memorized. He is fearsome because he does not care