Not Yet by Lightning Poem by Christian Hawkey

Whatever cloud—however charged—
& loud with yellow fingers
was in your brain. There were two clouds.
Consciousness

not yet struck by an I
wants to know, wants upon waking
a face, something to face,
a window & reflection's window
into spruce trees, snow-covered

or green, forever green as long
as a red cardinal, descending
the way birds descend
in trees, limb by limb
& lightly, a controlled fall

upon waking—it was raining. Lovingly
no one's hands, imaginary, undressed you
but your own, & the limbs
mirrored knew what you knew:

they belong only to the genderlessness
of birds, how each puts on one side
of the same air & hinges upwards. I
can't even say I am, when I am,
with you, since reading
begins in gaze & a gaze never

your own in a book, its pages.
One page is never turned
but over. There were two pages.
Syllable a word in you a self
with three syllables: wordlessly,

surrender. A red dot. A low harm
in the trees. A falling art
or the art of following without need
of knowing what may, given distance,
break into wakefulness, its endless addresses
to which we, reading, barely return.