Poem Asleep
       

Native flora regain their dominance
and elephants again grow hair and tusks
upon the central grasslands of my continent.

Anxious not at all, my kept animal sleeps.

I identify the bird in the frozenberry tree
as a waxwing, not a cardinal. I struggle
—so many instances of error.

The leaves you are seeing
in the place where you live
may be beautiful, but if anything
the engine in the tissue matters.

Asleep, beauty wanders off like a Hansel.

Fresco on the concert hall ceiling
riddled with pinpoint light streams.
Fragile ribbon of oboe.
Singularity of a blue world with atmosphere.

In everything, the deepest point of the leaf
is everything. Asleep, the body is most like a leaf.

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Copyright © 2011 William Stobb All rights reserved
from Absentia
Penguin Poets
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission