The Mineral Kingdom
I squint at everything
to become a denizen
and hold my eyes—
not hoping
in a forceful way.
A bright gray wind
piques wisdom
in a sobriety of quails
under synanthropic
corvid presence and
brome's red innocence,
spikelets with long awns:
they tune my 'you'
to suddenness,
the angry innocence
of the skin on my arm
in this all-out bright.
Is this the way
to become a partisan
of striations, of a world
far gone and older
by far than the dates
on the piles of old magazines
slumped on the toilet?
If not, then this wandrous
half-sleep is so much brighter
than my last dream
and desert’s propriety insists
on night’s transports;
new details will probably emerge.
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