[Climbing.]
In the beginning, it is thrill seeking.
The child you are, twists through thick winds –
dense and compact like the neck of a funnel.
Your hands – calloused and clammy from climbing up slides –
only feel the rungs of a ladder.
You pull yourself up – gleefully and clumsy, like a newborn – to sit among the taller and wiser.
[Pursuing.]
On shifting stairs, you are slow-moving.
Do not check a watchless wrist.
Ticonderogas bruise the flesh between your fingers,
Impatience chink, chink, chinks at you – a chisel on marble.
You stand stubborn.
the summit.
Leap off, before iron fangs catch your loose laces.
Airborn, nothing is missed. Still awkward, all definitions are lost.
No smooth sailing: you are guilty.
Tunneling under time made you no less criminal than the stealers;
traveling quick, you are no less unknown.
A serf to Fleeting – it all ran by.
He spun the wheel and laughed – hearty and loud –
while the flow of your moments blur quick and kaleidoscopic til they run out–
a roll of film settling in spirals on the floor.
[Experiencing.]
institutions like these are cyclonic,
they scatter and dissolve before uplifting.
You will spin in circles on tiptoes; unburdened by the wind, in any direction you choose,
but your head will still turn through wavelengths– a heavy metal record:
lachrymose, rejuvenating, devastating, cataclysmic, heartbreaking, enchanting, passionate – it has made you wild.
[Settling.]
You have been spun out,
and the world sees you in cursive:
structureless and shapely; soaked with blind readiness;
intelligent and insouciant in all the same ways.
You have domesticated the animal:
lined, dotted, dyed, shorn, crossed, cut, speckled, splattered, topped, and primal
– slumbering in fresh grass.
The Mire 