Spring King

Spring King
by Dan Raphael
from the bathroom window I see across the continent
of plants—political borders, geological anomalies, where a year is an eon
as the sun leaves and returns, faceless, unpredictable—how could it be the same star
a year of just punching the clock, a year of creativity beyond what the job requires
walking across a treeless parking lot I want to scatter into a dozen pieces,
I want to compress into a transparent diamond thread
wind seizing every opportunity for fuel & muscle,
how sunlight makes air thicker, how dust gives air many tongues,
when its night all over the world an unitineraried wind would
fritter into tornadoes & drag races
how far & fast this light came, how fallow wood blossoms & leafs
that one way boulevard sucking the earth into the sky, stripping the sky
of momentum and nutrients to return its fashionable pallor
as ego sun stimulates everywhere, haunted by the moon it seldom catches
like never-met lovers on opposite sides of the pacific, yearning beyond the edge,
dissipating what could be focused to burn, through or down
as the window on the second floor, the glass from where, wood no longer transpiring,
why the rain’s illegal immigrants, why the light doesn’t fry us like eggs,
I’m 15 feet above the ground and wingless, too ephemeral for the trees to notice.
too slow for squirrels, cats and birds to attend
if I knew the clouds language loud enough to reach them they’d do as I say