So that no one might think
that a flesh-and-blood author
moves furtively through the poem,
that it is he who is stirred by the shadow of leaves
upon the southern wall,
that it is his heart counting down the hours till dawn,
that among his fears
he has added the fear of a world without bees,
that it is he whom autumn unsettles
and who now slips into a higher register
because he failed to hold it back,
that it is he who has been cast aside
for the world to devour,
that it is he who feeds his loneliness
like fish in a pond,
that it is he who checks tomorrow’s weather
as though the salvation of the world depended on it,
that it is his silence pretending to be metaphor,
that two important words trail behind him,
words for which he searches for a listener,
that it is he who revises life within the poem,
that it is he who has switched to airplane mode,
which has nothing to do with flying.