I face myself, the thing convincing  as a face can be, although it breaks where it should mend in laughter.  Do you believe in me though you  should believe in nothing,  where it hurts a little, that time of life that stuns  into you, so you see the future, where you stand guard, eager to accept you? Everything I’ve known, little  is more uncertain. It is like  a glow, difficult to speak of. So did we age, we as we are in the comic paternity left us by our beachcomber friends who found in their time words all around them gleaming.  It stuck and I was me, some  fraction of the truth, which  more than anything was addition.  The face is there, for a time present, then it goes into the earth, having seen through the vast prism. Sight is circles and cycles.  The face changes what it wears but always the eyes,  silent and alone, holding course  while everything that ever happened is added up then forgotten.  Quiet trench in the sea, years find …

Does time make us crazy  or is it something else?  I see myself but back away.  I want to know what life is, but only gain the subtle topping, cosmic merengue dissolving  on the tongue. Something  catches in the sieve. There is a carefulness I can’t shake. As though I could check and turn away  from pain. But life puts its hands inside our bodies and leaves us blinking,  reforming. Terror enlightens, but so does doubt, the tenderness of it. Strong pain can kill, and I know I’m looking it in the face when I get down on myself.  Isn’t there a nicer way to be? It’s hard to take shape all the time. Beyond the sovereign July  I came to life in,  I’m playing polo in a dark field.  The Pleiades shimmer down, ticking off Orion’s shield. On what can I depend? Telescopic laughter sounds far away where gravitation rends.  The sky tilts  its head to hear  whatever signal night can send.  The clouds are all ears. Wayward, I listen as they bend,      drifting …