Anonymously Curious

This constant want
for unbuttoning,
a loose-buckle heat
makes my teeth lean toward
big green trees
with bursting fruit

and every morning
i look up
at invisible mountains,
wandering,
great mineral crowns on my head.

the shortest walks often take me
strolling through echoes of foreign tongue and
i long to get lost in
the most revealing ways.

creatures come and go
helping slow these eyes
to see with all of my self-
fox trot silhouette,
skittish possum paused,
woodpecker drumming hard bark with its beak,
sneaking beer traps in the garden
to drown an army of earwigs.

A student of the body
looks with the pupil of the heart and
I know my mother is well because
when we speak she interrupts
to describe every new bird,
"Oh there's the wren. I'm sure that's the one I saved."

When the world becomes too known,
it's good to leave the house.
That's when I'm hungriest for clouds
and cutting cords to rusty anchors.

That rising heat is
how the
fire inside
speaks out,
whispers
in cedar smoke,
wants to
strip me bare,
rubbed in ashes,
then rolled
in rain
and rivers.

Most birds
first discover
their flights
in falling
and lately,
every little breeze
or rustling
comes
with some
strange calling,
makes me
want to
dive or die
crystalled in
my reflection,
every moment
meant for
swallowing.