Attachments in the Very Ordinary: 14 Positions in a Day

1
I’m in the garden checking leaves, seeing caterpillars
emerge, and growing as far as they can expand
before they retreat to emerge, that tireless everlooping cycle

2
Some tree leaves take in pollutants from the air
use enzymes to break them down

3
Air full of the confetti of toxins, and the broken
Air full of sound and the way of breath
Air full of change and tomorrow at the back of my throat

4
I don’t need to know which butterfly has given
eggs to each leaf, or what gender they may now become

5
What is the same is never the same
Every movement changes a body, a leaf, an ovum
Even in sleep we never rest, any of us

6
Everything is damaged, even when loved
As so much is food, exchange for so much, the milk of bodies

7
Even you, love, as I hold your hand, your body
too much history travels there, and the heat between us
that history travels my body too when we meet

8
An ellipse travels through a never-ending sentence
What is . . . now missing, and . . .

9
Completion is also where things are defenceless
So let it go on, into now, into chrysalis, darkening into
light where the wings now emerge, wait on a branch to dry

10
Light is spillage, along with rain, along with the contaminants
we press through even to awake in a bed, on a branch

11
Every leaf curves around survival, sustenance, frailty, yes, even beauty
and becomes what another becomes, vein for vein, xylem and phloem
water, minerals, the photosynthetic, overflow, life and dying

12
Anything that curves is more than a wish, it is a way, a fullness
a signal of rebirth, pores, pod, wing, seed on the breeze that changes

13
I’m in the garden checking leaves, as if I too have pores, stomata
that might give back life, or I hold your hand, as if there is something
to give in the same not being same, but companioned towards what fills

14
Love as a renewable, to not contain but to hold . . . let go