Red rock…

...like that planet some call after a god, but names
are just names – essence slips through fingers.
When I look out at night, I just feel my blood loose
and close, pulled magnetically up. Even now,
the sky blue, it is out there: everything there is
and ever has been. Maybe we are too afraid to accept
that – the finality, wonder and gift of it slowly dying.
We have a great view.

I turn to bloody muscle and nothing more, gummy
and awash with salt, or to a haze of electrons
and howling dogs. I tried keeping these circles going
around my waist. I never had the skill, couldn't do limbo
either, was only good for books and saving ladybugs
and spiders from being crushed. Funny how
in the water, the circles break, or rather, fall
into themselves.

In dreams, I go back in time and into the future
all at once, find people and we talk, and it is coy
and soft-bellied and old, and sometimes I am
told someone has died, and what does that mean?
I wish I were somewhere I could see the stars,
preferably over water. I think I remember that place.
I’m not sure who I was, there. If I was awake.
If it matters.