the picture is inside your head.
 
 
my room can be a cave with windows surrounding it.
I shelter here.   I reach out from here.   I listen here.

although it’s true, I listen more better outside of here.

I was gonna say, I get tired of only listening to only
myself when I’m here alone.   oh, but such a lie.

          when am I really ever alone?

          I forget, but no matter, here you remain with me.

I have lived in this room.   I am gathered in this room.

I share myself, beginning from this room.

I make pictures for you to see my room.   see me inside.

see my walls.   the orange sky blue barn, the procession
embossed so slight, almost invisible, but that’s the point,
the flower inside a dream, two faces in clay, one you could
almost touch for real, feathers strung in a circle to be worn,
the temptation of Christ, everything.

oh, and books.   didn’t realize at first just how much kin
they represent till I took a picture of two of them.   more
then history, as much as family, how I measure the wrinkles
of my skin.   as good as any stocked cabinet of the kitchen
could possibly be, being more than starting, but coming
to understanding endings too.

I have worked to share some flags.   here see me
waving to you.   I love you at least that much.

Sometimes I walk out to the balcony, second floor.

I am every different shade and shape of green.
I am the rabbit who hides himself.   I am the coyote
in the dead of dark night.   the ears show up first.
I am a black cat curious.   don’t stare.   not polite.
I am a white butterfly.   one, just only ever, one.
I am a ferryboat, barely visible.   big horn starting.
I am the train that rumbles the dirt like it wants
to be an earthquake.   I am remembering the sea
in California, in Big Sur, Henry Miller and his friends.
that bookstore in San Luis Obispo.   thanks.

I am lost.   the better to be found.

I’ve been wanting poems I want to write.

I am an old abacus my grandmother gave to me.
I am a jar of scramble brush from a dry hillside.
          oh, that scent.   summer hills breathing me.

I am an old ocean wave.   but we don’t last long.

I am waiting to live.   I am waiting to die.   I am
waiting to know the difference.   I am grateful
for friends, for a woman named Julie.   I am just
plain grateful.   I try to be a good idea.

I try to not mind being sad.   I think that
gratitude is the natural state of existence.
more than once I’ve fallen, scraped my knee.

then I remember you.   in my room.
 
 
 
 
in Italian the word stanza can mean “room”.