The Glacier Moves

Sometimes
I lay there on my back
in the dark
and I wait.

The fan whirls
overhead like an anarchist’s
voice
while a woman sleeps,
makes her sleeping sounds.

They are the sounds of words
and their meanings are hidden
in the folds of a mountain’s
snow.

Furthermore, the mountain
is swept along,
it sweeps along, and cries, and her feet are touching
the cold sea.

Her acting is in the leaves at the base,
the leaves have
turned black this year,
and are now dead and
dirt as well as their
original forms,

and these ideas are farmed
like salmon in cages,
their eggs
withheld
to buy more cages,
and the cages repaired
to buy more milk.
Who are you?

I say to the face of the fan,
as the shadows return to their proper orders, the leaves
crossing over themselves
in quiet hymnal prayer,
though then it occurs to me that this idea
is wrong;

There is no prayer where there is no idea.

There is no prayer where there is no love.

I wait to hear the sound
of a waterfall, her snore,
and that means
nothing but what it’s helped me to do,
and that’s fall asleep.