My Chair
Where I sit is not my chair
but on my bones stacked up my back.
The me is from shoulders down for air,
chin up for sight and speech.
Though toes curl the chair legs
for balance, my feeling is, has always
been, that life is in my hands.
I bite their ends, steady minutest
threading for eyes as guide, but hands,
to put the finer point on it, are touch
that sends another's skin the feelings
all these bones contain, before
a word is said or eyes meet where it's dark.
I held a foot high in the air and
pressed it to cheek, held lower leg
like a bundle of baby bones and cried
that this was not the joy that keeps
me here but makes others live.
Where I sit is not my chair
Where I love is not my body
What I see is not my life.
That Hat
Nothing
is what
the yellow leaves
on green grass
hinge backward
to these seconds
in the dark.
I remember
driving toward
the late sun,
ice on steel
and concrete,
blindness
without shade.
I want that hat
I hit on the roadway
as evidence
I passed there.