Getting There

The only things that moved toward me

were the white hands of sleep: twisting

or stitching, moving separately, floating

on a lake at dusk or in the startled heat

you feel when there are limbs or dead

things in the path before you. Vistas, deer,

waiting or dead in the woods in the somewhere

we never get to, moving so constantly until

we live in the background of a beautiful postcard.

A raft takes us to each different island with long

gaps of silence between each one, a password

shifting somewhere in the heads of the still

people there.  In my head I’m walking underneath

or inside their green pastures. To make the rafts,

spend your life gathering every piece of spare

wood that you see. Inside the green is the raftmaker.