On the Ground
Night wrap me early in darkness,
fill my eyes with star sparkles,
then let high clouds be ideas.
This old blanket has kept me warm
four decades and more.
Bless the señora who loomed it
around my shoulders.
I will write a song without words
and play it against the canon walls.
I’ve come this way to break day,
to tell stories and to rest.
I have come to witness the moon.
The truth is that I have seen
strange beasts in my dreams
and with my eyes wide open
have known the edge of nothing,
the voided center of my mind.
What cannot be imagined?
More freedom than can be endured?
My hands reach for other hands.
Touch is the least mediated
of all our senses. Touched again.
This is how we know ourselves -
the grass brushes against our legs.
I must stand with my back
to the wind, my heart in my throat.
I had ran away. I know the courage
it takes to disappear, how it hurts to go.
For now we hide in each others words.
Earth makes this small transition.
The enemy is our own mistake.
The enemy is always our mistake.