I wipe the wet night from my lips, drop by meticulous drop,
clear it crudely from my nose, surprise some foggy from it
with my suddenly widened eyes.
The smell of the earth can sneak up on you like a sucker punch
the moon enormous and hanging too low as if ready to bounce:
a demanding dream in there haranguing
wrapped in layers of memory smoke.

The dawn is close; stops, starts, stops
like it had a mind to make up.
Still, it's a near-perfect if excruciating thin note
picked up by countless violins, and without ceremony, dropped.
Weary of the prologues, the light will just come on
falling off a flock of birds like beaten snow
but in the grassland the nests will fill with eggs
and the bushes like hypodermics turns fire red
drawing a blood from the sun-veined air.

It would feel good to peel dawn off
and then, one by one, all the other garments worn by day
leave the light to handle the body
but the day would most likely just keep on going anyway and even faster,
shoot right through the sky, homing on unrestrained incandescence.
My body in stretching after the implausible starts to throb
racing its engine but distance begets distance
and even the first station was from the start very far away.

I see the leaves are curling upward to enjoy another source.
The light spreads beyond it in all directions like a slick
and straining my imagination I can make out little bunches
of my thoughts and imagine them spinning helplessly, colliding,
all coming together in a collapsing, revolving heap
the horizon dizzy from surrounding them
and in wheeling round me in so many contradictory manners
becomes a special kind of an unhinged game,
yet for all the flailing and bad coordination, comforting
like the thick, dangerous and capable arms
of a drunken god up and dancing once again.