Autobiography

More than the Sum

I’m not your usual bird-of-prey:
a squint into the sun, a flinch
from the unexpected flit
of dragonflies
and time.

I weep hope and home and joy.

I am grit
in the rattling red bed
of a dusty pickup truck.

I fling foible and folly,
practice sloth and bee.

The rusty square-headed nail,
the weathered grey board, the discarded
shard of violet glass – all extrude
from my skin, for I am
empty mine,
ghost town,
proud and silent mountain.

I want to remember four things:
aspen leaves shushing the wind,
the tangible voice of dry bone,
a baby’s milk-curdled breath,
the swell and dissolve of my body
lying like a sideways figure eight,
like the stretch of infinity.