The Thief
In my need (and glut with agency)
I enter the forest and carry nothing.
The forest is a soft container
with its own light that darkens
before the sky—its shadow,
through which the eye sees
its own border—I pry it open.
I leave piles of stones.
A truth: I love each separate clover
as minor garments suggesting
an underneath, a sex beyond
that green veneer where I could be
held by somebody, a companion
in the marrow. This is the ecstasy
of unreciprocated desire; why I don’t seek
transcendence or grieve
this station. In my desire
I have entered the forest and found
the stream’s ambivalence
approach disdain. The cedar grove
at dusk does not blush, turn pink.
This boulder does not privilege moments.
It is itself, made. In a dream
I was light in the shape
of a body; some reciprocal
encounter, schoolgirl imaginings
of emotional or sensual
transference. Another truth:
I have destroyed the webs of spiders
and thought myself large
grasping at the air around the body
for threads when there were none.