Hazelfaern Again

This is just a table I rest my hand upon —
one warm, oil rubbed surface to refract the generous light
of an idle, open, fecund Arpil afternoon

This is just a table, as this room is just my own —
a permeable enclosure expanded by the heavens
perpetually peering through

In this moment I could say I am completely
seperate, if the light explores the boundaries
where a hand and hardwood meet

and shadows blur distinction, as our perception
which is fluid, throws a gauze across the moment
in which I’m here and then I’m gone

I trace the line of what was once a tree ring
across the surface, pondering origin
wondering over the woods in which this wood once swayed

What is the story of a table?
What other hands, aside from mine, have touched it?
What was that work like? How’d it go?

What breath, what chatter, bathed it’s transformation
from a sapling to a leafy tower to a sawyer’s harvest
and finally into this? What holes, do you suppose

have been created and refilled throughout that streaming?
Forests and pockets, mouths and waysides, finally this room
all bear witness to a tale sprouted from a pollen’s

gauzy leisure, if they are mute as this surface, as this
afternoon light is, as this hand brought temporarily to rest — all
fallen from somewhere, all equally possessed if, in this moment,

we imagine time suspended, frozen, disconnected
from the first and then the next tableau into which every story
goes to decompose

This is just a table just as I am just one person
just as the light becomes an easy metaphor for consciousness;
there are walls which seperate me if they are punctuated
by eyes which may open and bear witness

drinking in perception or, protectively, narrowing against
actions which connect and disconnect and reconnect

I set my hand upon a cloud of pollen, a foriegn child’s country
a sparrows empty nest, the platform of my rest and then unrest
the trestle which bears the work I wrestle, my future plates
my books, my weary head

I say I will create a tribute to the earth and light which bears me
I say I will let the light bathe me nameless