#65: of boiling water

hands in the middle
holding our youth
the centrifugal forces of our fingers
scatter us like seed pods
when we all tip over

the contortions of our bodies
define us in the grass
our minds left to ponder mysteries
traced in clouds below us

eventually we all find
a certain cave in a certain canyon
in which to pause the world and rest
between decision and action
another pile of laughing bodies
another shadowless sleeping world

on the other side of the mouth,
throat reaching magma earth,
face pock-marked with old age,
it is possible to lay again in tangles
of limbs and possibility

spread the fingers to exact degrees
to count the blades between them

But all the planning was lost before
in our games of circles
and crumpling friends
with clouds retaining shapes
of newer masses of water molecules
in deeper thought and contradiction
focused intently on feeling again
posed with eyes closed to pretend
our friends lay in the distance