Pared from clouds, These pieces of paper I arrange and rearrange. What is this that has happened?

With dream ropes, Tied to the mast of night, I haul in pieces of moon. What is this that has happened?

One time when I glimpsed You beyond a curtain Of falling water It seemed as if I saw Lightning glitter. Since then you rain In my dreams, since then You talk much Laughing.

Listen: from him, who doesn’t Know you, ask and find Out what your name is? What is this that has happened to me?

See with skin Naked like the rosy Haze at daybreak Don’t walk around These hills like This. Don’t bathe in The salty seas like This.

Moonlight spreads over The waking hours of the day. And on the tender skin Of fruit, I keep carving Your name. What has happened to me?

(A song loosely translated from Hindi)

What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge I enter water. Who am I to split The glassy grain of water looking upward I see the bed Of the river above me upside down very clear What am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I find this frog so interesting as I inspect its most secret interior and make it my own? Do these weeds know me and name me to each other have they seen me before do I fit in their world? I seem separate from the ground and not rooted but dropped out of nothing casually I've no threads fastening me to anything I can go anywhere I seem to have been given the freedom of this place what am I then? And picking bits of bark off this rotten stump gives me no pleasure and it's no use so why do I do it me and doing that have coincided very queerly But what shall I be called am I the first have I an owner what shape am I what shape am I am I huge if I go to the end on this way past these trees and past these trees till I get tired that's touching one wall of me for the moment if I sit still how everything stops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centre but there's all this what is it roots roots roots roots and here's the water again very queer but I'll go on looking

geese arrive in four vectors of Vs

honking, inter- secting, whir- ling in circles

as they angle over my head and drop

to the water. As I walk away filled with

sudden happiness, (so sharp, so little) I send a pebble

Skittering across The lake. No sound. I turn to look at

the web of ripples and find in it floating a white stone: moon.

2004:10:24 18:15 Lullwater Lake, Atlanta