The I

I heard it was once said,
a tree is 10,000 slivers;
beyond separation, we reach out
to share this touch inside the fire.

Self flashes forth, born as
brief as every star we name;
removing our collected titles
is as simple as cutting clothes off
inside the grave.

Who learns to handle such a knife?

I imagine reassembling
ashes, sparks and smoke
to put the tree back on the mountain.

I am such
a dumbshit.



by jerry gordon
9.15.07

Random 9

Fake Stairwell

As

by Jerry Gordon

Water, Dirt and Stone

A turtle is a rock
is a dragonfly in the moment
becoming all as
time unties all our
tender threads.

A rock is a dragonfly
is a turtle as the motion of
your breath fills
my lungs of somber crescents.

A dragonfly is a turtle
is a rock in this care-filled pause
of the sky waiting for each
cloud to drift
into invisibility.


. . .

Each cloud is
lost in the roar of
its becoming here and with
each tale we tell we are
new and dead
for this beauty we know
and embrace as
our ghost.


. . .

I became
the answer to my question about
how the dragonfly hovers
in its blue carapace
of witness.

I became
the question to the courage of
the moth in its cocoon of
living after the end
of imagination.

I became
the self of wonder in
the storm that each cloud echoes:
When we live for
nothing, we live
for others.


by jerry gordon
poems improvised while writing
on water, dirt and stone
9.2.07