Consciousness travels, my sweet: don’t you remember?
One sends one’s thoughts to thee as on this footfall,
or in this poem. But, truly, remember how we left our old meat-
heads to enter the glyph and ride the crystal ark, un-
bodied but worded. My mother is a starred thought—
and, Don’t You Remember? the Mind from nowhere is everywhere,
not just under your skin. The first mind, not evolved but absolute
rainbow with me, you and me. Nothing depends on it either.
Someday I will remember this very future I am in, image in space.
I will at least see her, I say to myself, she will be someone
else than one ever thought and her eyes will be blue words on white.
Consciousness travels from Neptune the planet to Neptune the god of the sea.
I travel to your irony and perambulation, your decibels and vehement
budget: I perceive you for you. You don’t have time. I
have time, I am the goddess of the smooth doorway. Let me in,
so I can abolish your description.
From For the Ride (Penguin Books, 2020). Copyright © 2020 by Alice Notley. Reprinted with the permission of Penguin Books.