I observe the tallness of nothing,
my face small in the turning,
its blink of skin alive.
Still here among the scentless moons,
the island alight again in the dawn
and the lowing, butting weathers.
No animals, no whetting of tooth or ear,
but the air makes a sound of hay,
winds as hot and yellow as straw.
.
My world is the same today: eyes of want and rain
dry air hard as a mountain, impassible,
the paleness of chalk in my mouth.
The air of morning jumps and whirls.
thirsting like a devil, gradually
uncovering my hunger and my bones.
I bare my useless love of dials, tools
aimed high in the aisle where no one passes,
ring upon silver, upward ring.
Its whiteness revolves slowly
in my hand like starlight,
like water, like faith.
Patricia Nelson is a former attorney who has worked for many years with the “Activist” group of poets, which began in the 1930s in the San Francisco Bay Area. The group often works with metaphoric imagery. Nelson’s most recent book is Spokes of Dream or Bird, Poetic Matrix Press.
Photographer’s Note: This poems power is that it can take you so many places.