Little squares crossed hatch checkerboard, black and white
tile floor laid out in quadrants, double axes, intersections, I love
how you cross each other perpendicular like that, love
your 90-degree angles, right elbow bent up, palm running parallel
to the tree, saying Yes I see you rising, roots witness to rain,
limbs reaching from columns, listening to the quiet equations,
wooden monks chanting to a girl, the word OM
inked in black along her spine, the center of her back, in numbers
and coordinates: the word a reminder plotted (0,0)
which does not translate into two nothings next to another
on a train, but the place where negative meets positive space,
where a breath threads itself through this earthy fabric,
where bones build adobe, and red gymnast birds hop back and forth
on electrical wires drawn like pencil lines through sky—
O, little wingspan, little horizon fluttering in the air:
were you there the morning man rose vertical to face
the sea? Was it a night like this, little bird, was there a moon
like this one when you were patched to blue quilt of sky?
Does a song rise and fall according to its slope? Tell me—
do the notes move, left to right, like beads inside your throat?
Photo By Kris Bolton
