The eyes over my shoulder are reminding me

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The eyes over my shoulder are reminding me

to remember who you are. You used to wear 
burnt-orange Nike shorts with a blood-red zip-
up jacket, so who are you, trying to pair 
up words with words, images with truth?
A hopeless shaper. But maybe, once, I’ll say 
a thing a different way, rearrange 
the world in a pattern fresh as day-
light on this breakfast plate. 
                                           How strange, 
the way you convince yourself that in this coffee
shop bursting at the seams with muffin-minds 
as soft as yours, that with a ball-point missing
its cap, you could shape the world. 
    Perhaps with time. 
And do you have a pocketful of that to toss
on to a notebook page, scratch out, then toss
again again again in gambler-hopes
you’ll roll a lucky 8? The man who doesn’t
know when to stop is called a fool.
                                      Then I’m a fool!
No you are wise. Be so, and set your pen 
upon the tabletop. Let the world roll 
without another re-arranger in 
her way. 
But what if fools can shape her, guide
her, better than the wise? What if fools
can understand the language of the light,
the silent wisdom in an autumn dawn?
You're wiser than he who hears what is not there.
But how I hear!—the laughter in the forks
against the porcelain, the dust that rides the air
across the countertop—I am a fool!

---

My pen goes dancing across the shaping-space,
unlocked. Caressed in light, the world offers
herself to me, unrobed. I listen, look—
with but a fool's hope—
to hear, to see, to hold her.

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