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The loose softness
of quiet, wingless shredded paper:
Its ungraceful trail through the sky,
around the ghosts of rusting leaves
and the dark shapes that once were pines —
The wet crunch,
followed by a snap, as my thickly padded boot passes
roughly through heavy clouds and frail wood —
With sudden violence, each gentle whorl turning
to whirlpool; each speck of inverted ink to thrashing curtain,
light leaping off the brightly mirrored earth, rising up,
then, with a sigh, remembering to fall —
Powdered sugar resting softly upon the greatest cake, shaken off
by birds and shivering hounds; everything painted
with a thin coat of swan’s feathers; everything
resting under great buckets of white sky
that soon cannot contain their weight
and let go the wind, releasing fragments of shredded paper to land on my nose
and lips —
The taste is the sharp chill of finding freedom
in isolation, quickly dispersing in the warm cavern
of my mouth; the damp billow of a silver-lined
cloud.