Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Today I must not go and cannot stay.

Strenuous transformation has not made solid

things or the joins between solid things. Not

rock, not rooted trees, not the river or the

trickle fusing dust motes on the windowpane.

Rather, part has moved steadily away

from part, showed centre scatter, flinger of 
                                                disconnect, 

hypothesized dot in which vacuums bloom.

Dispersal. It has made me old and kept

me from being born. Arthritic fetus,

I limp toward the pension of beginning.

Love and duty fill my hands, purpose

granting pause, while I myself slip through them

scenelessly. Gratitude for improved

resolution of a dismal picture

is strange gratitude—though all thanks are due.

Perceptions flutter, sway, down to the sun-chalked

sidewalk in kryptonite stutter: “Is it

a bird? A butterfly? No, just a leaf.”

The prickly pentagram commits no shadow,

events becoming smaller and more eerie

as we spiral toward what can’t and must be waiting.

Give me your hand. Your hand. Forget this next.

The cloud touches everything as it dissolves

in a sky absolving everything save windlessness.