essentially arbitrary boundary

[ essentially arbitrary boundary ]

you have seen me standing beneath a sparrow
midwinter, staring at the jack pines' fullness.
I reminded you: ice shocks piling up
in the heart. Apian shiver. But not loudly.
The sky is a tumult, a muffler grey
and worn, a complete knowledge of every gene
within an unknown animal. Heaven tells us nothing
past a small moon drifting across the muddied teeth.
A coming chill against my cheeks, covering
breathing. The body's strict integration mapped out
by its reflection in vague trees. I'd like to say,
I know that blood's in me, at least a thimbleful,
I know there is nothing my finger can't trace,
I know my weariness has a man in it. How it feeds,
finds a mate and, ultimately, is another organism
with indifferent curiosity. I will cry a little.
I will carve my story into this tree. Sandstone
and scrub elms. Discernible only through
direct study: the foamy berth of spittle bugs
acts rapidly to dissipate the earth's cruel
ammonia waste. The gift of fire,
can suddenly be reached, held,
dropped. It must seem so clear to you.
How, say, this minutiae ends, where my breath insists
under trees over stone walls. The only way
to break doldrums, you suggest,
is to dispense with vestments of un-
natural safety. The observer and the observed.
The air becoming no air becoming air again.
I think half-thoughts. I do not exchange my own
suspension.
I am standing here or leaning on the prow.
* * * * *