the jarring feeling of waking yourself
just as you’re beginning to slip
into a beautiful sleep…
your hand relaxes its grip
as the book you’re reading
makes a loud thudding sound
as it drops to the floor
you dream of floating…
and a book with endless pages
being turned by monkeys
and twelve astronauts trying to spell
‘dilettante’
on their ham radios
laughter doesn’t weigh anything
but it causes atmospheric disturbance
you can balance a book
on a nipple in space
but you’d rather eat the pages
than risk a paper cut
and reading naked in space
is not for everyone

These few days have been madras
with a twist of peated scotch.
I wonder at the cool breeze
chasing me from the mountains
and find I crave warm bread
and you.Would the leaves hold secrets 
or do they shed their storied colors
with abandon like veiled dancers?
With an upright stance
and a kick toward a spiraling tomorrow,
we flow the way of late summer creeks,
swift and ahead of the sun.

With only a vague notion now
of mobility,
she recalls a grey Samsonite suitcase-
she played endlessly with the straps
and pockets-
and remembers thinking ‘how small I am,’
how she could curl up inside
and be carried far, far away.
The luggage tags could be changed,
she knew,
to read wherever her heart wanted.
She practiced the writing carefully
on leaves and gum wrappers.
How many afternoons were spent
packing and not getting anywhere?
How often was it
a tawdry Howard Johnson’s
instead of a
lake near the mountain
of her dreams?

how the chords flew
against the window
like a storm
but from the inside
and if he but knew
what it felt like
cresting
quietly,
he would want to devour
all I have
instead of transcribing
what he thinks he knows
into legible figures
set then filed away