It astounds me the ways
I scale the sky. Every day I have to
relearn my body.
Who will tell us to the world?
Our children whose heads we breathe into
like seashells casting those spells
our mothers once wooed us with?
A playground where we became the mist
hanging over everything?
We knew it was our insides
tugged inside out at last.
Once when I was a boy on the dodge
hopping fences, I let my leg hang over the lip
to that other world. I stopped
on top of that wobbly fence,
and hit the pause button on the world.
I held it all: the shadows from the plum tree
whose fruit we used to peg cars with;
the dust from my father’s broom;
even the boys chasing after me.
I knew the time was passing
and took even the shadows of the branches
into those pockets God had sewn
into my body for the traveling.
I kissed the moment flush
on the mouth then let it go,
surrendered again to the earth
with silencers on my tennis shoes.
Maybe time itself came brushing
the trail behind me until it vanished
clean off the grass, and I took up residence
with all the other balloons
floating along the landscape.
live in the layers 