The Beautiful Anxiety

The paths are full of iron and stars.

Who does not welcome all this

black, burning with misplaced rain?

If it’s reported that islands have gone

missing, remember how seas love us

and trail in our blood.

If there’s too much of a ghost now

upon the clouds, a wing, a roar

none of that will open

the dead to this world again.

There’s nothing purely accidental

in your edgy condition.

Damage seems almost a necessity.

If there’s beauty in patina, it’s here

not just waiting for the cracks

in the permanent. It’s subcutaneous

like a language that entered you

without stamps of approval.

You step out with your necessity

because nothing will grow within

houses for too long.

Your sandals and heels, your capped toes

they are some kind of assurance

along with the belated rain, whose water

slaps the ridges of your song.

Each tree that wasn’t there before

each element or fibre, the occasional feather

or slip of whitened excrement

the glassy tips of plastic that flutter

as you pass, they are places.

Hands have admitted them

and their appearances

have depended on each isobar and swell

of time zones.

You must be going elsewhere

see how it skews the horizon and adds

something green to the temperature.

There are instruments for this

kind of knowing, along with bright machines

moving tonnage along temporary roads.

But if you can still turn your hand around

the rain and touch skin’s rearranging

of its walking —

figures

atoms

curves

droplets

and distinguish the cold of it, dropt on

sun shadows within the petrochemical hum

it’s erotic scent, a ghost of ash

passing stars, and a kind of subliminal speech

among legends of flowers and birds, roses

of the place where the phoenix plays

that useless search within the art of speech

to fly amongst lost things again

the long road from the north

hard sails built out of trawl.

There’s never time to know

yourself. That’s the beautiful anxiety

of moving, as each gutter, each wing

each clip, or semiconductor

the air dripping through your skeleton

your fur that scares easily, as it all

seems to be crashing.

The air moves history into history.

You look where leaves hold the light

skin holds the light

edges hold the light.

Nothing holds on

the light.