Hurrah for us wiseacres, us
Earthlings who pout in the glamorous soup
Of airs we never put on with any success, democratic

As trees though.
Thorough our thought is though
Not exactly filling, our maneuvers those of mules

Hugging the sure contours of the map's bumps
And bridges, anything that divides land
Up into the here and there.

There deaf fathers of our country
Count out into pockets empty of everything mere
Tobacco curls, pine

Shavings, little tortures of lint and vermilion.
And here we in I's guise
Long to welcome you

Into the impartial embrace of a desire to number
Beyond the imprecise
Many.

Long to disturb the angelic mummery of unrinsed perpetual night
All soapy with stars through sheer strength
Of love, its inchoate prowess

Like that of a bee,
Its stinger dropping off, imbedding under skin like an itch to recover
A meaning

That will not save us and will not let us continue to be damned
Though the instruction manuals
Say opposite

In acres of print, in words that lie
On the page in rows and furrows and send out rootlets, tendril-
Fine, and tubers that knot up

Rhizomic, a net
Labyrinthine where glossary is only appendage
Though firm we stand, and cross, and fertile, and on indubitable earth.