Love, I Am

All day this thought
had me reeling—
did not vanish
and then return—

was persistent
like a ceiling
leak pinging into tin.
Opaque rain all day—

what am I
to myself:
two feet on
some land

when upright;
a backbone with branches
when supine? Thoughts
become

weary—
and merely announce
linearity. Love,
I am

so wary of this
happiness, when
it floods in— when
it tumbles to a halt

—a rough cut ruby
at the center of a silver bowl.
Rain is the loneliest color
then lake, then shade.

^{Note: “Love, I Am” references Baling’s “Snow in a Silver Bowl,” Case 13, The Blue Cliff Record, and was inspired by and uses one line from Robert Creeley’s poem “The Rain.”}