The spastic rib cage
of their gnarled roots
rises ominously,
as if the corpse
is on the move.

High in cranky limbs,
white with bomber’s moon,
the lone evening star
suspends itself
in drift’s appointment.

The cold eye above
and bizarre bone beneath,
at quick yardstick ends,
have their mad ways
on this act of sleep.

One is a light flung
from a cave pit of darkness
in an order of science,
the other as much
accident as me,

curling and edging
around resistance,
trying to get by,
waiting night to tie
the optic knot.

The nonsense of noise
loose in leaf and limb,
crickets and peepers locked
in dark industry, in the
chaotic madness of beauty,
the world coming apart

where it comes together
under a bronzing moon,
becomes, upon itself,
the hierarchy of signals,
sovereign of the ebon airs.

The boned ground’s a soft
act of attrition, my down
stuffing aptly squashed
to a standstill, buried
under buttocks, earth-bending.

Legless, I will wander
these absolute mysteries,
dream my to and fro as likely
as that grave Genovese
who set himself adrift.

Then, just as time
threatens the being of sleep,
as it leaps its grand leaps,
I will hip a hard root
near alive on the ground
and find assurance.

Even as I count
the hundred years of its
endless watered crawling,
its aimless dry agonies
and long-dread dowsing,
the roots and I come together
in the continuum.