I was invited to a painting class. I confessed I only know how to paint with words, so they placed four images before me. This is the fourth of my drawings:
A white dog
sat upon the chest—
or did the chest float beneath the dog?
Or did both dissolve
into bluish-white nothing,
heaven newborn sclera sky
woven into fur,
threads of light
keeping watch
over the pulse of innocence
that drifts like smoke
through the hollow of the room.
Shards of paradise
fracturing, scattering
across every other place,
and yet here—
they fold,
they float,
soft as a sigh,
soft as a breath,
soft as the quiet hum
between stars.
The whole sky
has sunk into this chest,
or perhaps the chest
has risen into the sky.
And the dog
is the hinge,
the guardian,
the pulse,
the fold—
the infinite
resting upon a single moment.
