My Light

Eileen Myles

                                                            for Stuart
 

I'm not a fool (click)

a woman coming across a field
her ladder hanging right
woop woop woop
If I could count them
thirty-seven trees
and trillions, overlays
bugs
where's your family?
one night I saw a blaze
a tiny blaze burning up the road
towards me.  Remember
this I dreamed.  A car will
coming this way again
and the rain and
the red will smear
like fire
it's a community
trees and fours of them
plugged in on the lawn
and the one ancient
walking dog named
Penny

everything waves.  Labor
a roller coaster so
far away, the smell
of its teeth -- hum in a summer night
up and down

I see pictures.  Sprocket.
It's lonely to see the pinkness so slow
It's all alone crowning the trees
the hundreds  miss tree
like an echo

one part white
the day
one part faintly blue another
day;  calendar

and the earrings of a bird  chim-chim
and the faces of the poets in the glass

I'm saddened
the trees are electrified
& the world surrounded with black tar roads
winding our ball with sound

My machine
my light, my day
my lady reddening by the pressure
of the trees on her flesh
stand up to her lads
soon we'll be nothing but what surrounds.

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