#7) Untitled III

Sometimes I stand on a haystack and imagine
the prickles are coals on a dark jungle floor,
and I’m walking barefoot, testing my skin.
They say that the mind controls the body,
and that an absent mind is more than a dream
with fairies, but a cave where water drips
in the air; every sense feels far away
until one lands on you, cold, like a fever.
I think the sheep watch me and wonder
what it’s like to be higher than the fence.
I would tell them I don’t feel the hay anymore
and that the wind gives me pins-and-needles
in my hands when night rises and I still
haven’t caught a cloud. The jungles grow
around me and they become blank eyes
staring from the undergrowth. I meet
them all and stare back until they turn away,
the coals flickering in the grass, growing cold.

 

(One day left, only . . . twenty-two poems to go . . . :S )