sometimes skin, we think
stops world

encumbers
wind within
           alertness

we are small, we think

listening
risks too much

mind wants to possess
every twirl of leaf in air

border condition: tense

must keep out
           tremendous mystery

protect our
           selves
redact
           body

guard its banks

*

fear is old
practically a fossil

ghosts have lived in her mouth
as long as history

ice congeals eyelids

she flakes at banks we try to cross

immotility, not
           wisdom

*

world of straight angles

make it linear, we learned
between angles, fall

I tried to tame
what I was
           in contact with

it gushed back in my face

*

thick with forms
           world

dignity trapped
in manmade
           dirigible of
colonial shame

worldviews that sliver off
beingness

savage civilized
subdued from speaking
           of those
           others

I keep them secret
even from myself

*

skin has a million tongues

thirst
points to divine capacity
           (ours)
to mingle out of
           porous self

brushing my palm
on tree moss

I sense myself as knower
           entangled

intuitive flash in body

           moving across
no longer compressed
                      small

           unfurled

space swept with
breath & void

rubicons darken

flit with sharp rapids
           longing

what slips between
           lights its mist

faces in trees nod

this, me, human
           wakens
to not much else
just my rightful
           place in world

fear will not
keep us
           small & folded

we, who are
mysterium tremendum