We dine on fresh emotion with each day
a fork, red salad plates of grief or joy
then rest on beds of flashing opal-fear
a docile pillow lost upon a plain
too late, too sure, to realize comfort won
sweet hours lost avoiding stroboscopes
by hoarding little stones in mattresses
by lording over rooms gone dim with light
I fell through a cloud last night,
piffed then sluiced
through cumulocirrus fields—
puffs of smoke
strung gray and then white again
I looked to the night beyond,
orb-eyed, past
the cuneiform I’d cut,
(whistling air)
saw Castor and Pollux guard
wet nebulas strewn like poor
Zeus’s babes
that wandered Olympus bare
Stars shift shape:
my Gemini folded back
to cloth, to my bedclothes’ jet
fabric sheen
Polaris, the cad, stretched out
(closet, clock)
and up to make walls, then spun
a vortex to fan me dry
Bed again—
tucked tight as a diving suit
(humming) and
I fell through a cloud last night
Northwest Journals 