And the light crosses me, the plane depth of my reason
and the plain (as in wheat, Ukraine) the small midWest of my waiting
for my life somehow to be in the baker shadow stillness
of September, the wind in the fields stake dive of the whisper
with Idaho silent in motion as a glider
clinging to the breadth of the last ripple in the pool
the whirl of the planet, your hair scented with chlorine,
and this year's loss, all ready to be collected

Eating space as if it were a sacrament, it can't be like this
life crosses us, framed in our mortal cases
the laughable bone prospector necklaced for sieved gold
the children at school, putting the 'o' to Idaho
or the 'sas' to Kansas as if nothing were the matter
touching on the smoke and aluminium of a seal's pelt
moving on salt footsteps under the Big Dipper
and the poured causes and effects
while through the window the traffic goes by
the rock faces of people and their lives
magic, inscrutable, in cars the tombs of distance

Words graze across the plains, themed like buffalo
esoteric like a doomed species
and the be-imagined body of the circus strongman
aches for more touch than the figural skin
of the naked lady on his bicep may give him
while me, I'm hung up on coincidence tangent and rumour
like the sound of 'mercy' buried in 'Mercedes', or close to
and unable to move for the next temple mile
linked by one crooked finger to one crooked finger
the tiny necropolis of a resting thumb
each slender atomic gesture of ours
weightless, riverine, the first mover
sleeping alone threaded on vegetable dreams
accumulating death with interest
each stillborn thought haunting the mother
of no children waiting to be collected from school

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.