Cabbage

If only I had the genius of a cabbage

or even an onion to grow myself

in their laminae from the holy core

that bespeaks the final shape. Nothing

is outside of us in this overinterpreted world.

Bruises are the mouths of our perceptions.

The gods who have died are able to come

to life again. It’s their secret that they wish

to share if anyone knows that they exist.

Belief is a mood that weighs nothing on anyone’s

scale but nevertheless exists. The moose

down the road wears the black cloak of a god

and the dead bird lifts from a bed of moss

in a shape totally unknown to us.

It’s after midnight in Montana.

I test the thickness of the universe, its resilience

to carry us further than any of us wish to go.

We shed our shapes slowly like moving water,

which ends up as it will so utterly far from home.