“All light is arriving light”

by Carl Adamshick

Then, you surrender, let your body
tell the story you, yourself, cannot tell.

I miss the caked, cracked earth inhaling rain.
Take me into the milk and iris,
the land of your eyes.

Here, navel to silent navel, navel to vicariant navel,

language is our shadow.

*

Memory, too, is a shadow;
that figure carried over in math.

*

Then, you are telling a story late in the meal.
After all these years,
at this table,

with this laughter
pouring out like so much wine,
you are a strange I want to sleep with.

*

We move into one another like seconds
into hours, like light
through space.

It seems the longer you look,
the further you should see.

*

The day, drifting through itself,
is all around you.

A slight gap where you live,
continually becoming yourself, closes

for a moment,
and you have to move
and when you move
your body moves
like the day, like breathing.

Then, you think: I am elsewhere,
at another station, waiting. I do not have

what I have, I am elsewhere, a thief
carrying a low blue flame over the dark field.

*

Then, late in the evening, we are talking,
I feel what I am saying

is what you would say.
Such ease passing
between us; the lisp of a lifted page.

We are nowhere, together.

The world and its people seem so distant.
I come to know
you are speaking with yourself

and I am somewhere, in your body, burning.

*

Late in the evening, we are talking.
You feel what you are saying

is what I would say.
An ease passing
between us like the lisp of a lifted page.

We are nowhere, together.

The world and its people have slipped away.

You come to know
I am speaking to myself

and that you are somewhere, in my body, burning.