| I thought the earth | |
| remembered me, she | |
| took me back so tenderly, arranging | |
| her dark skirts, her pockets | |
| full of lichens and seeds. I slept | 5 |
| as never before, a stone | |
| on the riverbed, nothing | |
| between me and the white fire of the stars | |
| but my thoughts, and they floated | |
| light as moths among the branches | 10 |
| of the perfect trees. All night | |
| I heard the small kingdoms breathing | |
| around me, the insects, and the birds | |
| who do their work in the darkness. All night | |
| I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling | 15 |
| with a luminous doom. By morning | |
| I had vanished at least a dozen times | |
| into something better. | |
