“Write a poem about your toenails.”
On the stone floor, patterns
of toes once pattered,
like dough unrolled I was a boy,
and my little toes grew up
into something I rarely feel,
and the nails grew hard
and rigid, with fringing dirt.
“I’ve seen it all.”
Not every life is spent on the airy breeze,
looking for the holes of a tree to perch inside.
But the walls we draw around ourselves,
make us hide from the roads that wander
and our patched kisses like grassy slumber
waiting for the soft toes of a child.
Photographs pull us into towers,
and the true affections peer at us
from the night, as we draw curtains,
and our world shifts closed.
If you see it all, but never know
the heart beating from the oaks
or the tides bearing salty breath
or the snaking rivers gently woven,
then you will only know the stones
that stub your toes and make it rain
on the sharp world you flicker.