DIANE M. LABODA
Summer Confucian (sic): getting my Bjork on
If I follow a raindrop
down the skylight glass, mirroring, prism-ing
the dark clouds above,
I get dizzy.
Not just a brain confusion,
but a literal spinning about in my dryness.
If I follow a Cottonwood seed-fluff
from the tree on a gentle zephyr,
tumble and turn,
I float a long way from home,
straight away into the next burrow,
drifting along curbs and sidewalks and hostels.
If I follow a robin, with its orange tuxedo shirt,
along the garden’s edge,
my hearing implodes
with every contraction of worm-prey
every tunnel between the roots
of crabgrass and day-lily.
If I follow a chipmunk’s excursion
under my front porch, darting in and out,
left and right,
I feel the vertigo of the earth come again,
shake the trees, send seeds aloft
and down between stumps and blades.
If I follow the moon as it wobbles
among the stars on its cyclical path around us,
I feel the chill
of the dark side rub against my skin,
the moon soil give under my bare feet,
its smile turn rancid under my lust.
If I follow the sun across the sky,
that defines atmospheric blue,
I sweat out words
for shine and brilliant, sweat out salt
and toxic epithets for an earth gone mad,
afire, shaken by our lack of insight
and our unspoken desire to be alone
contemplating our weapons.
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