Audio: Read by the author.
I set out over the
unknowable earth
once more. Everything
still underfoot. A mat
of fallen and unfallen
matter. Things flinch
but it is my seeing
makes them
flinch. Before, they are
transparent. Now they
line my optic
nerve. I feel them
enter. Brain
flinch husk
groove. Subject.
Honeysuckle,
bramble, vine,
vibration
and
web-tremble. How
will the real
let me drop just
in time.
How will it pay me
out,
pass me along to
the next
I? I
walk down the hill
where I feel my
letting-go go
into the down
of the hill. I
know I will
have to leave
the earth—my
difference
running around
wildly looking
for where it
ends. That is
life I say
humming,
idling, mind’s
engine dozing
in me, its
squint, that
sweet way of
inhaling before
speech while
the hand slides
down the spiral
rail like a
millennium
dappled with
dna and spoor
just right
enough to
end.
