Upon the Furthest Slope You Know

The spaces
between
things began
speaking. So it was

I understood I
was now
to remain
silent. Saw how

we were all
plunged
into this new strengthening
silence. Was it

vision was it

catastrophe. This

first person
I use here
as a way of referring
to my being in

abeyance – to my
unknowing –
though who are we kidding,
it was not of the radiant kind

where we wait in line
willingly
eyes closed
for the tap on the high spot

of the soul
for illumination. No.
We knew all along
we were being driven

however kindly –
and always with water & treats
and names murmured
which had been bestowed

upon us
long ago
before we could resist
the temptation

of being made so
singular –
to slaughter.
So the things had seemed

secretly our allies,
but free,
so free.
They had not acceded

to these transactions.
Had remained mute.
Neither accomplices
nor witnesses –

mute …
This stand of trees
before me now,
and yes the one tree

my need for companionship
picks out,
that certain one
in its own light,

solitary
it seems to me.
It seems to me
we regard each other

here now, blazing,
at the end.
But it is no longer
my turn

to inquire,
to push around it & at it.
And yet how its branches amaze me.
How is it I

have not seen them before
for what they are,
these miles of nowhere-going
tangling & re-

directing this
October light, every journey
silver-grey with
roiling shadows going

nowhere

in the dawn wind.
What is nowhere
is the first thing
I make out

when it finally begins
to almost speak
to me. Listen to it
when it speaks to you – it is

the next world.
We are done.
The light is rising, the light is
sharpening

everything,

but not the mind.

There are no limits
to the world’s
imagination now.