Anecdote of the View

Once while standing at the kitchen window

pickling radishes in the night, I saw a man stumbling

in silhouette up the hill-past the rusted

moonshine still.

His spare hand tore at the wilderness

as if it were a metaphor or something

that couldn't be as it seemed.

The brambles had turned to mandibles

or the chitin had stiffened into thorns.

But the crystalline lung

demanded its place

in the glass-worshipping grasses on the bald.

I was jarred when the whole of my state

turned of water in a drain

and swirled into itself there upon the hill.

I had to wonder if I was I, that is, if he was he

and not some cell of mine meandering,

a sphere among spheres and of them.

I wonder still.