death of the self is the losing
of individual choice
even if choice had been lost
long ago, at birth, for example
when someone said you were a girl
as if girlness represented
more than a cultural construct
labeling you as inferior
or when someone noticed
you were brown or black or yellow
a degenerate alien object
yet another construct
peddled by whites, by males
waving their pricks
like rain-gorged earthworms
flipping & flopping
until the robins swarm down
oops — karma
underfoot, under the metal spikes
clamped to my boots, the many-times-
trod-on icy trails of late winter
lead me once again to the woods
earth’s snow cover softens with melt
the sun’s bright, the temp nears forty
buds grip red-tinged branches
willows gleam golden, in bare swaths
flattened grasses twitch skyward
the giant fallen trunks showcase
yellow lichen, orange polypores
knobby clumps of evergreen moss
what seems black & white the winter
long shimmers in spring’s prism
no, nothing
to admire among Persona nongrata
the accidents of Emily Dickinson, Rosa Parks
no more than rogue
offshoots from rudest stock
fie to the one who named
the species after the male gender
as if Branta canadensis were Gander canadensis
as if it weren’t crime enough
to name a bird after a nation state
brutes who compete
ravage, vanquish, dominate, ever enclose
what once was common turf
exterminators who now face extinction
richly deserved
no, not by the slow dying of the sun
not by earth's heat erupting thru the crust
instead, by its own hands
mining, burning, polluting, the species
wills its end
when I stand on an eastern shore
I see the rising sunbeams
strike the sea in a straight line to me
also in a straight line to you
proving we are the same person
in the same place at the same time
the real — what is outside me —
exists each in an actual place
while what is inside me does not
settle even after long trying
any sense of you being you & me
being me is make believe
you can’t tell what my hand
held out & open in outside air
means, nor can you ask me
since I don’t speak, you can only
see — my fingers slightly bend
the lines of my palm crisscross
my thumb arcs at ninety degrees
one half of a bridge to somewhere
unexplained, my hand’s appearance
alters slightly as I walk past you
my open hand travels through
the light of day, perhaps my toes
spread wide inside my shoes
perhaps my blood flows
faster when every digit spreads
you can’t pretend to know
to stand on a threshold
to act before & now & after
to suspend time
as if to be galactic, as if to be universal
to turtle up through green water
to lizard along a lichened trunk
to spider a thread out to a distant limb
to raven a power line
to raccoon a compost heap
to sample dirt
to touch, to pick up, to drop a handful of pebbles
to trace a meadow, a forest, a ledge
to angle toward sunshine
toward rain, toward dark, toward starlight
to find instead of self
a commons
