In a mind as mild as an eight o clock sky in early June
a thought swoops by like a swallow or bat

too quick for me to identify it by flight pattern
though it’s a thought that swerves and starts

again and once again after something unseen

not a thought that travels distances well but I’m not going far
content on the porch of my consciousness

a small level space on the outside of a house
I will never enter. The breeze

in my mind comes from someplace else and the thought banks impressively
in the same way logic sometimes makes us think we have direction.

The mind sky’s crayon color is half time and half heavy air

and despite its endlessness the thoughts flying in its late afternoon light compete
for an even smaller piece of space

held by a memory the size of a twilight’s tremoring bug
something I cannot even see but something that feeds the thought —

the whole reason the thought took flight is that this is the time
the memories come out of the earth and rise;

what they are doing there I do not know. Inside my house
in each room ceiling fans are rotating just above lamps shaped like leaves.

Perhaps they are turbines of an unknown will, a helicopter fleet in reverse
trying to keep the house from flying up in the air as it eventually will

like the tiniest memory of something bigger than my life
rising into the chasm of June light.