A GLANCE

Every window a storybook and every face
erased in the storybook of space, for us
who are still breathing and being
breathed upon, the body will sometimes
literally rock

with remembering how thin-skinned and brittle-
boned it is to the slightest shock; a hairs-
breadth between bite and lick my two
new kittens flick, frolic
to fierce in the same jaws'

grip.

Animal Buddhism: compassion for human beings
in not tearing us apart,
for the poverty of the possible
forms we live in,
and the countless forms of creatures

we extinguish.
For which I hereby offer my poor, sorry-
assed micro-
fraction of regret and thanks we owe them
for allowing us to approach and stroke them;

to hear a sixth sense purr from one
realm to another messages held close
enough to sniff
but not decipher.
In the dust and ashes the world's beauty is kept

as grit under the eyelid.  I guess
at what is hinted there and the message received
I have just now realized is that it knows my thought
before it's reached my lips. Clear
through. Grips, but not

deciphers. When the information matters, music
takes over, music's complete
ocean.  Animals know it, intuit,
through the mud
we have come

and are this
far from,
a chord struck once and left
thereafter open.
May whatever part of me is lightened by that breath

not recover too soon from whatever hurts it
into focus and scares it into fullblown
swoon.  Whatever comes to it
must have been its end
desire all along, just as a man will run

not knowing what is chasing him and though not knowing
where he goes.
One day he'll have to rid himself
of his celebrity status
and show his carcass.

Many things must disappear
in order to see
the one thing that matters, that you've wanted to reach
all along, which I can't
say I do.

Face more unfathomable than any disguise,
featureless among so many features as to be
invisible... and that's
your best feature.  What's mine
is just a held

look on loan, as are the eyes
in the head and the head
itself.  My lightness
comes from their leaving me.  Goodbye

and greetings in a single glance.