Where are you going
in your yellow kayak
with your curlicue leaf-
paddles, your one red-flecked
petal-sail? How
will you get there
over the great fern-waves, under
the young maples,
the doomed elms?
I question your ability
to survive, this close
to the road in the
twenty-first century, but
the apparent ease
with which you’ve
arisen and blown yourself
into translucence
makes me think
you could go on forever,
after all, and alone,
making the cup
of yourself out of nothing
but loamy woods.
I recognize bravery
when I see it, the way it opens,
the way it enters itself
so that all
that remains is flower.