On This Planet

I’m putting one foot in front of the other.
All my bones and tendons know what they’re doing.
My animal body greets my fellow animals so:
You, Mr. & Mrs. Squirrel, and you, Sir Earthworm,
don’t think I don’t see your dazzling performance.
I’m remembering something from long ago,
I can’t tell when, I breathed in like a Buddha,
out like a bear, when I could tell it was leaves
wrapped everything in a proliferation of green.

I’m putting one arm in front of the other,
they’re swinging like pendulums tied to intelligence.
Everything is green or whizzing,
the blood in my body or the grass, for instance,
the black cap on Miss Chickadee
nearly doffing itself, so skittery
she is, expostulating ambulation.
All the stars are out and the moon and sun.

I’m so happy I’m almost flying to my grave,
all my atoms orbiting, orbiting each other
till there’s no "my" left.
My DNA is recapitulating so fast
all you can see is where I was,
not where all my arthritic elements
and proto-tumors are off to.

All my mothers and fathers are about to die.
They creak, they tilt, they get night blindness.
Whose diaper will I change next?
My nieces sing the song of poopie caca doodoo
and giggle, happily embarrassed.I sing too.
A gigglefest of farts.

Even consumers become people again
some hours after they’ve walked the mall
out of their feet, window displays out
of their eyes, digital carols out of their ears,
Roy Rogers, Macy*s perfumes out of their nose.

I’m up in the pine bough, the one Cezanne painted
over on the left. A summer breeze soughs inside me.
December, go ahead, rattle your freezing rains.
All my chilblains have fled to the Bermuda Triangle.

The end is coming now. The Christmas child,
Rockefeller Center, Trade Towers, the holy
buggered search for Osama, Superbowl XXXVI.

I’m casting my prayers to the four directions.
On this planet, I’m running, not walking.

On this planet, I’m running, not walking.