The Three States of Matter

I

Earth called me here / taintless and void

as anyone / only I'd forgotten this

Footprints at dawn / a jaguar's tracery in deep snow

while I sat up with the stars / in doubt not wonderment 

What was next / would I find what I sought

I was a fountain stilled / by winter's cold

II

With time, out of that prism, I became

dew writing its way over the world.

My ear was to the ground — even under the ocean

where the silence is total. I mirrored sky

without becoming sky. Delivered on the body's vow

not to be bloodless. How to reflect everything

without falling to its stain? I'm no lonelier than

the dark or the stars, or the walls drying in a new house.

The windows washed so that we can gaze out:

deep-seen and running and perfectly clear

III 

Assume then              any form that suits you

says my life to me        on the canyon rim    

Taken apart beneath the runoff        

The body a lit ribbon                 where the rain left off

By its geometry you see with so much more than your eyes

and with aching shoulderblades

become something new on the wing 

I alone in the echo       see the dark is waiting