How impertinent: the mind
Who can sleep with such
            commotion?
I close my eyes and
       there — !
There they blend and divorce:
       the images, there,
       in my backbone.
They glimmer and rush — a cave
           of bats,
an ocean in a bottle.

There are times, however,
if I lie very still (soul knees drawn to chin)
momentarily eclipsing these asteroidal,
      loud children,
that I can smell the dark black richness
    around me. The cool,
stretching stillness.
      And
above me pass shadows, fat and round as cradles,
      full of habits and smoky faces;
Heavy shadows hang down into this current;
Serious, wood-riven: barrels of sin.

The currents are quietly determined; gentle, like humored cats
Cold and warm pass like
kisses
into one another’s cheeks
I am in the middle — they wrap me in ribbons.
The world is spun around me,
a subterranean silk to emerge from.

This, then is the goat seed — born inclined to butt forward
to lower the head
    and heave.
(Something twinkles softly: fireflies in a jar?
This country darkness winks cheerfully, smiling me on.)
All the while I am growing, stretching, doing the dance of trees.

The sleep shore crests and shines; it is a silver lip bitten
    by the dark,
    a bold, bright girdle,
a hedgerow of weaned, mouthy leaves.

And I feel like a budding twig:
There is a red jewel in my every eye;
A flower in every vertebrae.

I am an old wall whispering stories.