I remember feeling what it is to be the multitude,

The sum of all the forms we share,

Although I live now in but one skin,

Heavy in the evening-dreary heat, when clouds drift in,

 

Yet now the dreaming near begins,

I see only shapes in the shadow-light,

As my hands slip before I bid them to –

 

            and I want them to –

 

They slip beneath the quilted sheets,

Beneath the blankets wrapped around me,

Here upon this resting place I have made –

 

            Five pallets high, two wide, and three long,

            Layered with cushions, all fat with feathers

            Plucked from ducks and geese,

            Though one is stuffed with human hair –

 

And my flesh, suddenly it differs,

And the nearness of the wanting,

Is your red hair tangled in my hands.

 

It augurs, most of all, a susurrating rest of yellowed leaves

And its nature is the loose slackness of a fast-running bird,

Whose dexterity belies the purpose of its pistons and gears –

 

            cranking up-down, up-down, up and down,

            my desire the gauge, as heat rises, and pressure, too –