My Debt

Like all

who believe in the senses,

I was an accountant,

copyist,

statistician.

Not registrar,

witness.

Permitted to touch

the leaf of a thistle,

the trembling

work of a spider.

To ponder the Hubble’s recordings.

It did not matter

if I believed in

the party of particle or of wave,

as I carried no weapon.

It did not matter if I believed.

I weighed ashes,

actions,

cities that glittered like rubies,

on the scales I was given,

calibrated

in units of fear and amazement.

I wrote the word it, the word is.

I entered the debt that is owed to the real.

Forgive,

spine-covered leaf, soft-bodied spider,

octopus lifting

one curious tentacle back toward the hand of the diver

that in such black ink

I set down your flammable colors.

—2018