Despite the fact I can’t lay flat
two fingers,
on my way home from work
I walked on my hands
from my corner—
over grass and elm shadow and across
the sidewalk’s light
upheavals, half the way
to Sunbeam Grocery—fresh blood-chutes
to the brain with each
stride of the palm,
pair of inner blue pumps
pretty much off duty;
spine, lats, and thyroid cartilage elongated fully.
This I do with the soles of my hands:
cop a feel of the globe
in mega-dimension, how dogs sniff voles
through fronds of wild rye.
With how much grandeur dandelions keep their minds afloat!
Noble, with clover laced in
industrial bug juice, my dog Toby a swatch
of roving cumulus. The whole schmeer,
by which I must now mean the full-on world,
seems half again as much a meanness derby
as anything else. Therefore, let me lay
these words in the church of your mouth.
From Human Directional (Etruscan Press, 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Diane Raptosh. Used with the permission of the author.