These are notes to lightning in my bedroom.
A star forged from linen thread and patches.
Purple, yellow, red like diamond suckers, children

of the star gleam on sweaty nights. The quilt unfolds 
against sheets, moving, warm clouds of Chinook. 
It covers my cuts, my red birch clusters under pine.

Under it your mouth begins a legend, 
and wide as the plain, I hope Wisconsin marshes 
promise your caress. The candle locks

us in forest smells, your cheek tattered
by shadow. Sweetened by wings, my mothlike heart 
flies nightly among geraniums.

We know of land that looks lonely, 
but isn't, of beef with hides of velveteen, 
of sorrow, an eddy in blood.

Star quilt, sewn from dawn light by fingers 
of flint, take away those touches 
meant for noisier skins,

annoint us with grass and twilight air, 
so we may embrace, two bitter roots 
pushing back into the dust.

We've come so far, thought the astronaut
as he swam around the capsule in his third week
and by accident kicked a god in the eye
—so far
that there's no difference anymore between up and down,
north and south, heavy and light.
And how, then, can we know righteousness.

So far. 
And weightless, in a sealed room
we chase the sunrises at high speed
and sicken with longing for a green stalk
or the heft of something in our hands. Lifting a stone. 

One night he saw that the Earth was like an open eye
that looked at him as gravely as the eye of a child
awakened in the middle of the night. 

I’m not right. I’m interfered with
and bent as light. I tried to use the spots,
for months I tried with rings. 
Only now I'm thinking in cracks
that keep a modern light
lunged. I keep the porch light on
to burn you off in ghosted purls,
the licks of which filament me.
My Day-Glo tongue’s cutthroat.
Though I’m not clear,
I’m a sight whose star stares back:
it’s a new kind of dead;
it hides its death in my cinched
testicle. That bright burr makes me
unreal and itch. By the time
I’m something else, you’re making weather
with so-and-so. Drama tenants you;
it wades in queasy waves,
mottled to the marrow.
My mean streak beams neon
so I won’t be refracted
or led to reflections. My eyes
trick god’s and kick the careless reversals
of radio cure-alls. Rays suffer
until they clench the damaged night in me:
where I go out, gone as done
in a mood of black moving through.
Darkness sits there, pleased.
An iridescent ire could not go unaired,
my limbs wicking at the window.
Look out the window.
I’ve outened the world
to show you real barrenness:
a void a light
warps into want and then wants
until it warps all it glances.

I.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

II.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

III.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!