Such Insomnia and the Shape
it takes in the dark. Moon with a faint
dent. Clouds squishing like grubs. The minerals
awake in their sightless caves.
Indifferent. Loveless.
Wulfenite, azurite, hematite,
sulfur. What I must do
is breathe and think of breathing
things, orchids and insects, the soft
exhalations of cedars on the cliff’s
edge. Or Röntgen’s first images of X-rays
on photographic plates:
fragile skeletons of frog and fish,
the left hand of his wife,
her tapered bones within their cloud
of shadowy flesh. The beginning
of seeing past sight—
in which what’s interior becomes
visible architecture for the living self.
I love the thought of slipping
into a darkness which is actually
the beginning of a different kind of light.
But how to know which darkening
is just a dreaming spinning out
the cocoon it will soon sail away from?
No one to turn the lights on,
to say this grotto’s simply full of dust
and brush away the shattered pollens. 
Nursery Rhyme from Another Century
The Oranges in Uganda
Statuary
Such Insomnia and the Shape
Piano Lessons II
Water Clocks