every presumptuous romance knows beyond doubt

the soul is a seeker for the soulful

and the spirits are about and out in the glory of morning 

crowned in light and adorned with its golden glows

a brewing cauldron of every metaphor for renewal

i walk beside the pasture 

leaping from one world to the next

while sleepy insects stretch their bodies in the rhythms of their kind

they are soaking up the waking warmth of another new day

it is beautiful because it is more than what I can imagine

i think of the image of a broken man or a simple boy 

he seeks to share his love of the sparkling plains

and the grand quiet

and I feel compelled to spit to mark the ground and scowl an eye

at his pompous lack of understanding

and entitled sense of worth in his opinions

calmness is expensive 

some dream, some heart, some person died today

in a way i can’t imagine

 i leap from one world to the next

and the grass beneath me splashes away in strides

i am the Moses of hoppers in the grass

hopping up and high away 

into the reaching stretching flower’s budding heads

blooming in their upward reach

blooming when they reach as high as they can

i think that is why we must always reach as high as we can 

to feed the bees and the wasps 

the filthy flies and the suffering souls

each bloom its own and all a painting 

no quilt was every so marvelous

were it not for the marvel our love for quilt makers

who are themselves a sea of stretching souls

how do we make our making greater than ourselves?

perhaps it isn’t true (a true question I mean)

perhaps we can only marvel at the many little things anew

and i leap from one world to the next

where the golden field communes with the soaring blue

where spider’s webs are drooping bowls of dew

covered with the lid of a celestial dome

they are speckled about in their elegant waves

answering the elegance of the grasses subtle swathing sways

i leap in worlds and fill a table, family warm 

with modest wood and simple prayer

a mom, a dad, two kids, an empty chair

sparseness seems right for people

(though only with a wealth of sympathetic care)

their bowls are filled with one blood sausage 

respect is a truth of nature

it waste nothing

and comes back to itself

though we dismiss it

because it never returns as its original 

born again itself anew

change is constant and forever in every ever whichever 

perhaps this is why symmetry is so striking

it whispers of potential

and escape

from our weak and wobbling selves

and finds the world without attuned to dreams within

as if we had the chance to understand

if we only looked our looking so

we’d soar above ourselves

in perfect balance

like the caterpillar’s oblong cocoon

tucked away from light and space in a womb 

or may-well a tomb (depending on whose silk is spun)

to be reborn as a feast for the eyes or a feast in a dew colored bowl

 i leap from one world to the next

Apollo gallops with the sureness of the blue round sky

as gnats flit about my eyes

they tilt my head and wave my hands

with the profound power of persistent pest’s prolonged prodding

i look down to get away

we look down when we’re escaping

from what we’re looking at

or what’s looking at us

so down i look

where the ground is filled with so many things

infinitely dismissible and interesting

did you know that insects move more biomass than all other animals combined?

its not even close

i think

i think i remembered that correctly…

i think until

the sun begins to burn my neck and fear looks me up

though fear is close the look looked far away 

to there i see at the end of my thoughts a singing single tree

its stillness shares its formal dignity

as if something is certain in the world

and i rest the body of my soul on it

to see if it can hold the weight

and breath deep

to see if i can dive as deeply

to touch the bottom of its confidence

and a gnat flies up my nose

i go down in a snort

and leap from one world to the next

the arrogance of men is in inverse measure to their fragility 

my blood is now rising with the sun 

and i am ringing with cliché songs

about the presumptions of entitlement

and the fawning mob

a vaudeville scene of a woman fighting to give, gives all she can

and some jerk-off takes the boardroom credit

and the audience nudges and elbows 

in varying degrees of snickers and sneers

and then an image appears:

two cords snake out from a screen 

and jam their ends into the eyes of open onlookers 

we’re fed through our eyes by the sights we see

and so often fed to the means of other’s ends

where do we look is what depends

two bloody sockets a front of our face

and a gruesome display most thick in cliche’

preys on our hopes and dreams and fears and weakness

i wonder: how real is the world we see?

and then a gnat flies in my ear and i duck away 

like from a swinging axe borne pendulum

with my head again down 

and so pestered now that I’m kneeling on the ground

genuflection unto contemplation

i leap from one world to the next

children are happier because they can’t see over the tall grass

they are closer to what pulls them down

where the crickets are a dome of sound 

they echo in the valley of my mind as i stoop myself away 

i close my eyes and listen

and my body melts into an endless blackness

to the size of all the hopping violins, now and ever

i stretch myself across the world

and float in an ecstatic sea

fluttering like a moth in the swimming air of night

a corked bottle lapping, warm waves, stars bright

i am nowhere 

where effort gives way to bliss

builds to it and up

like the exhilaration of creation pouring from the void and through it

only to go back again

back to nowhere and nothing

i feel as though i could make something much greater than i am

and a truck trundles a belching rumble 151 yards from me

and the spell sputters stupid 

it was always so stupid wasn’t it?

what else could i expect from me

i look up and two gnats flick my face

my knee now kneeling numb trips me onto a plant

poisonous, probably

one cheek is now wet

bathed in the glistening morning dew

i sit an akimbo king in the squinting splendorous steaming light

robed in the spirits of the golden morning

leaping in worlds