Only open homes & woods & pansies’ blue ledges
can lead the zero with his only arms
to embrace himself in open fields for all to gape upon.
He unbuttons steel-gray sheets, a knotted top coat,
bares himself, his hole, a vision
as framed by the marker that is
where
his body blew and left enclosure intact,
skeletal innards
enough to make moviegoers ask,
“Has anyone finished themselves yet?”
I haven’ t. I swim the lagoon, take note:
the babies are barely dirty,
their armpits smooth with silky soot
weighted in apartment cycles like
we keep movement in boxes for thunderstorms,
and the railroad leaves a dancing behavior
absorbed by every second thought,
escaping the socket that was his mission,
his body incomplete, to help us
to the maidenhead of Niagara,
a target awakening
the chlorophyll of trees,
their tongues the densest forest
canopy and floor
thigh deep with root rot we sleep on and fold
into growing-whole sheep what becomes of the lot:
night’ s zero hour
of what is & what isn’ t, till death, not us part.