Like Parachuters Clinging

Sometimes

I will lie prone in a field

on my belly,

feeling the pulse of my blood in my hips,

feet,

armpits.

I’ll sigh to melt my ribs

and soft middle

into the hairy ground,

and I will look up sideways at the

trees and sky and gravestones.

I know the earth

and everything on it is too

multitudinous to pass through my

eyes, ears, mouth.

Yes, even the most minuscule slice will not

fit.

It is better for me to mold myself

like a child against the bulge of the dirt,

to lean my ear to its mouth.

I will notice the millimeter skeletons of

flowers

falling

from branches overhead

with aphids like parachuters clinging.

They fall on my book and hike its creamy pages (like the Alps)

then fall from the very vertical cliff (like the White Cliffs of Dover)

to make landing, confused, moments later,

on my plaid fleece blanket.

“What planet is this?”

as they stride and plummet over, under,

around the loose filaments of fabric that

curve wickedly in their way.

And I will ignore the ambient hum of

Industry’s babies, whining

in the background

incessantly as an airplane, a car, a siren, a lawn mower, a flood of people moving on a strip of road.

Sounding a dull roar like an ocean but not an ocean.

I will not let it overtake the birds’

complicated whistles

or even a fly buzzing

or the demure rustle of the

unreciprocated colloquy

of the summer-heavy

leafed limbs

of cemetery trees

that maybe could be

actually only

mumbling to themselves,

though I will listen.

I’m too little not to.