I’ve looked under the cloud of my heart,
unraveled its complicated net of veins.

here it’s different he might slip or trip
or he’d slept badly or his wife just died
or he won the lottery or he was in love

listen to the sea in the pebbles on the shore
listen to them
the drowned

This new world defies sublimation.
Villagers, come to witness and welcome,

Their feet must be crossed, ankle over ankle,
so no man can swim through and enter.

On cleared earth, kittens play in bowls or are
forever dozing. Milk goats wait to be milked.

Short Buddhist morning, long Kafka night.
It feels like an endless mall in Paramus.

The body bags kept showing up
at the front door. Half the time
the clocks didn’t chime or work.

it seeps away at permanence, wears canyons
            from rivulets, recycles cement as sand.
I have experienced water firsthand.

I’m unconvinced that language acquisition
         propagates a body’s
   education