Look up, look down, see a morning spread across your palm
wrapped so fine in ribbons of dough and apple-blossom,
candy-bright buttons that might be birds or children
but are hours, ready to be opened or shut tight, as the
spirit-level directs. Swift-winged sinews extend arms
to gather villages, towns, cities, seas, each held in place
yet fused together with the tenderness of roses misting
a distant garden. Footsteps speak words, move doors.
A stream warms to spring, cools summer to a press of
~leaves,
waves against your bare feet where you glide out to swim.

Look up, look down, you’re floating past youth, adulthood
for other waters where jellyfish blur to specks of starlight,
pleached in turn to a phosphorescence that might be acorns
or angels but, for now, is the circumference of a smile.

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