May 26 (Werifesterra)

Last night I heard the first crickets of the year
and the first click and hum of air-conditioning units

five hours before my own calendar page turned over again–
I was in the woods of my mind, looking for a word that never lived

in the way some look for creatures that cannot be
where they have been seen though it cannot be doubted

something has been seen. By looking for this mystery
I was creating the word. Is this how love is created?

A word that suddenly obtains meaning and mystery
in the deepest neck of our woods? Five hours

from the fifty first anniversary of what I cannot remember
the machines and fans hijacked the night

lifted it in the bothered air like helicopters waiting
on every building to take off. But they never leave.

History just another season we can’t hear change
traveling as we are, faster than the speed of truth.

The mystery opens like the mouth of a wolf
and closes like bare feet running on a path

and in the middle is a window neither open nor closed
and a festival we can attend only as words to each other.

It spreads out like a spill against forgetting.
All the grounded helicopters

are silenced when the thunder knocks the power out
and people open their windows cautiously

one day closer to forgetting there was a night
without open windows and crickets.

The bare feet of a word prowl across my eyelids.
Each footprint is different, like a word in many languages.