String letters lead thought pools
to new tributaries and channels:
dreamsheds and waterminds
lily-mingled with the toadstool me,
whose organs are indistinguishable
from whatever I see in a mind.
And more! Sociality's friction burns
the painforest, anxious bamboo grows
faster than it can understand the
interventions of space in time.
Met in middling circumstances,
I saw this self, with its ishness,
bound to lend nature a metaphor
that develops dichotomy drums:
beaten up and down the trail,
paved by hooves and claws and feathers,
owl pellets are poems,
and these bones are actually mine.
Roman Ryan 