September sun, illusionless. The purple

field awash

in the hours of the first breath. You will not

submit to this light, or close your eyes

to the vigilant

crumbling of light in your eyes.

Firmament of fact. And you,

like everything else

that moves. Parsed seed

and thimble of air. Fissured

cloud and worm: the open-

ended sentence that engulfs you

at the moment I begin

to be silent.

Perhaps, then, a world

that secretes its harvest

in the lungs, a means

of survival by breath

alone. And if nothing,

then let nothing be

the shadow

that walks inside your shadow, the body

that will cast

the first stone, so that even as you walk

away from yourself, you might feel it

hunger toward you, hourly,

across the enormous

vineyards of the living.