My mother warned me not to go barefoot.
Sharp pieces of the world can slip inside,
severing all, no matter how prepared
you think you are. You can’t be too careful. 
I knew a man, broad-shouldered, who stumbled
carrying a glass salad bowl. It sliced
an artery next to his heart. He died
before he hit the floor with leaves and shards.
A woman’s mind can be like that. Shattered,
humming, its diced ingredients jumbled.
But I was always thought-full, always sharp.
Prepared for several places in the world
where I could slip inside and think clearly.
Barefoot, my mother warned me not to go.
                        

Rain, when I go about a foreigner,
falls hard and rough, like slate. Unfamiliar. 
At home I never use an umbrella
but here I feel the urge for protection,
a roof over my head, a place to hide
while liquid globes of grey pummel my head
and blur the biased vision of my eyes. 
Which edifice today dissolved downstream;
which library have I walked by too late,
tangled up in damp sheets and lucid dreams,
eager for new but paralyzed by vague
anxiety, of something overdue 
to be returned. I know I can not stay.
Not everyone has streets that wash away.
                        

Firelight. The world is constellated.
Darkness is breached, then seals up seamlessly.
A flash of silver beech bark, pierced cruelly,
tracks of its disease illuminated 
between trunk-plates of ancient pine, age-cracked
inside the flickering hegemony
of the visible, the matrimony
between things seen and things perceived as fact. 

The forest struggles to remain intact,
crumbling outside the red light of embers.
A limb pops. A shower of sparks rises,
tangles in the canopy, winks out. Stars
all but disappear. Consuming flames flare.
The fragile wisdom of the night contracts.