It’s time to notice again
the air-
and the perfect weight
to each of your colours
how your shadows stick to the bone
tied, occupied, speaking for you
It’s not like lovers might say-
in the locking of eyes
but in the whole, and in each of us
how the light
stretches over cheeks and nose
flashing of hair and fingers
inseparable from the flux of objects that clothe us
following the undertow of singular movements
becoming plural
raising of glass, leaning in, looking over—
I’m in wonder again,
and so casually.
I’m miming the actions of a person talking
And some words do come out, I think
I’m trying to stay here
“in conversation”
Knowing if I sink from it, I will lose also
This other awareness
That has crept in, like pleasure
Like heat rising.
We cannot have a metaphysics
I’ve read over and over
That line, and know it to be true
and also useless.
Because nothing will stop this program
of translation:
how might I move each of you into
The pictorial
so— outside of, or in spite of
or perhaps parallel to?
your bodies.
I can’t have it.
but you are full, not finished, open.
The program runs on.
It is night.
Darkness isn’t empty
It’s the gestation of dawn and it’s familiar colours
But these are better.
They are the promise and the mind
of colours
the root and the world
as it created colours
And the best part is, friend:
They are us
Innocently (how have we managed that?)
Rolling haphazardly out of some communal nest
Rubbing our eyes at the first sign of sun
And banishing sleep
Let me say it another way, there are many angles in:
The colours you carry now
are somehow the accumulation, the full knowledge of what
makes them.
They are not superficial to you
in this moment.
But they are equally fresh, as if their first sighting.
How y’all managed to do this
On a Sunday night, here
is a mystery, congrats!
Or we just say: it’s winter into spring
It’s earthlings, animals, it’s life.
