The bus is late again
and sleep's been short
a tooth on the tongue
sharpened,
but hi, the weather x,
you say, and yes
to chocolate from
a stranger -
too sweet fluttering
the heart with its
refined sugar,
same how caught
on a train track
it raced and emptied
of self, knowing
how sleep snatches
in the long night
and never wakes,
but arrives
repeatedly into being
like every day since
as if an eddy on a wave
could change course.
So you let the bus
leave, made cold
and troubled
like a cobra poised
above its own center
on thresholds of violence
and mercy, and find instead
the warmth of a sunny rock
to count the petals
on clovers
in the weedy grass
could a crown of stems
beyond the ordinary
be made -
a root of self
tethered to its own
shaping - would this
woken dream, depart.
skipping stones 