I leave me out

in an open hypothesis,

my face uncomely graffiti

up a factory smokestack,

the autumn wind singing

through my chest;

Cosmos plucking a jolly tune

on the ribs

while the clumsy old toad bounces

around

in that dark, moist confinement

under my breath

A minuscule, winged insect

touches down

on a rising page

in David Hinton's ”The Wilds of Poetry”

up before me,

so little I can't see it very well

It runs hither & thither

among the letters,

jumping proficiently like a hurdler

across sentence fences

I am careful

to keep the volume ajar,

not to crush the undefined little fellow

in its wicked speed reading

- and suddenly it is gone,

flown off

into the enormity of the tiny eastern bedroom

in Niemisel's mid-September 66°N / 22°E,

where I share the night

with a gang of turgid red & green Capsicum annuum
(bell peppers) plants

that we've just moved in from the garden

in view of the expected first frost

I feel their wavy personalities,

sense their kind,

as I move the place marker

a few pages ahead,

put down the book

at the summit of the bedside stack

and sail off

on The Great Ship of Dreams,

too much age stapled to the hull