by Chad Hollis
My argument with Juan concerned the minds
of chickens. How bird brains have it over ours
in ways that count. That was this morning.
Tonight the bendryl and wine bear me out,
I know I’d won because “the density of light
adhering to my face keeps it lively
and intact in a recurring wave of arrival.”
The vague flashes set me on the verge of animation
In ongoing ripples of becoming. Chickens again.
I’d rather be a tree among the trees
and subject to their laws. The desire to fall
versus the gravity of the situation, “there”
being the event from which vibrations radiate.
Is “there” a noise? This business of the self
is, of course, silly. Light may be construed
as waves but who can say there are selves
swimming in it, then returning to a nest?
This brightness holds me back a little
then surrounds me like a gas. I can’t sleep
but dreams come nonetheless colored with jerky
clangs and the hours take human form. In this way
time passes as I branch from its main stream
like a slough where gifts automatically return
to their givers. So many objects swirling.
It’s like Poe’s maelstrom. Inkwells, pens,
a box of instruction manuals, harps, winter
apples covered with wax. The curved
shape of a creature discovering itself.
Here one forgets the murmur of rivers
or light bouncing forever between two mirrors.
By now Dawn has reached New York and roosters
have finished crowing in the Hamptons.