Insomnia Quilt

Luck that lady with loose  

eyelashes and sweet oiled  

hair has hung the night time  

around her and clasped the  

silver moon at her throat as  

metallic scorpions click like  

typewriters in the dust and  

even the stars are splayed  

out and pinned to the sky 

Counting the bones in the  

human foot is a practice of  

meditation more than rote  

imagine a deep clear pool  

and metatarsals like white  

stalagtites and you are the  

resident scientist of your  

own body so don’t take their  

word for it discover yourself

If the world would give me  

occasion to rise, how tall I  

would stand against the old  

giant gray trees with their  

stone teeth and cedar strip  

tresses but in this grove I  

am the last to be born and  

the first to die and even the  

peace is heavy like water  

The worms have bored so  

many perfect circles into the  

pearly bones of this shell as  

to let a tapestry of sky pierce  

through when held up and  

framed with two fingers so  

gently against that coastal  

rare sun oh what if we were 

all so inoculated with light 

That man is not a cotton  

wood seed like so many in  

july tumbling like dandruff  

from the trees aimless as the  

soft buzzing of a slow dying  

moth but rather like a dear  

cracking vinyl bar stool that  

came with the place for he  

never made me fear to rest 

Under the wing of an abbey  

with no roof are daisies now  

growing and stray cats with  

tortoiseshell backs living in  

the piano bench and I think  

 perhaps graves are meant to  

be robbed and windows to  

be ever open to the air and  

endings to be taken lightly