Grass Moon
My whole body is warm and sticky
like a child’s car seat
just waiting, just waiting,
in the dark
the blue heron that lives
in Laurelhurst Park is breathing
and there is a wind
that is coming all over the flowers
and all the ferns. I’m on my way
to myself, that’s what I’m told, that’s what
all the people who want me
to be alive keep saying,
they keep standing on the beach
wearing old-fashioned swim trunks
with a bullhorn telling me about it,
and you are home in your bed
like a soft animal with really intense
feelers and a kind of knowledge
some people have to go out
into the desert to get,
some people have to take drugs for that
and walk barefoot over coals
and pretend that nature is a mother
always wringing her hands
over her lost children.
I’m making a museum for myself
out of pictures of people
I used to know and hold and their brains
are like carnations floating in milk
when I think of them I think
what do I really want
out of this branch I picked up off the street
which does not belong to me at all.
Last night I asked the ceiling
what was going to happen,
and it said this is what
is going to happen: you will have to
stay in your body for much longer
than you really want to,
and I thought about how nice it felt
the first time I shaved my head
and walked out into the rain
and how the rain walked
all over my head
and how when I hear someone yelling
something at someone else,
when I hear someone throwing
something across a room,
I want the world to be my laundry—
quiet and good and neatly folded away.
