sweet as a betrayal, the once which carries within

its own never & never its own more. I tried to voice

loud. Tried for star or startle. I tried to find a space

solid & grounded. A stone. A trunked tree. A place to hold

my feet to the fire I swore still burned inside. I bled

my time into borrowed, bested & night-wet & begging

the sky wide for any sweetness I could worship

into speaking like a god would, like a fire inside

unframing the body some body built as an else for me.

I walked, well-wooded & nightlit. I sought salvation

or at least explanation. Or at least an excuse for. The force

that runs these legs & the body they carry is never

an answer. The clearing opens into its existence as a clearing

only. Why am I unsated, so hungry with expectation?

Any word a god would speak is a word no human

could understand. I listen to the slick dark & its oceans,

its feathered furies, its glints that may be

eye, that may be teeth. I am not a thing like the world. & the way it whirls

its winds forward. It spurts in gnats & bark, folds its being

back into itself until its god tells it to begin, begin. I may be,

but I have no part of its sweetness. Its greenrise. Its again. Again.