(continued)

He wakes in the pollarded half-shade of a dying
walnut. The half-audible early birds tweet
ear bones press against each other
a passing satellite pings its archive.

Night had been a tree to him moving through space,
sparing him memorable dreams, something
medication never quite achieved
but if you sit there thinking, it goes dim
the golfball grain comes rushing in
like water through a window. All he knows
of the moon--its interlocking t-shapes
of broom yellow fanning
oilslick tailfeather--is that its
both outside & above, a bell held in a cup.

The pain is such a little thing to be wandering
abroad like that. He becomes aware of the
heavy air & that he's awake,
a hiss of decompression through the leaves
hanging heavy in a hoary-hanging sky
sickly after the rain hit, turning west
he hallucinates as it falls each ring of the tree.