I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing around
me, the insects, and the birds who does their
work in the darkness? All night I rose and fell
as if in water, grappling with a luminous
doom. By morning I had vanished at least a
dozen times into something better.