155. In Gallons and Forever

awake, alive, awave, asleep

and the tendencies of extension
past a certain section of conscious /
ness

deliberated thought as an action of breathing

tenses and how they hold
us in place
in time

(almost in time)

a living made from the assumption of burdens
pack on the back
pull of the mule
mountains slipping behind mountains

in a neverending way
but still torn in two
difference between river and sky

we knew a place divided by river
calling it the Cumberland out of deference to the namers
but we thought of it as water
as watery highway
as a way away

bridge goes over it
and sun comes down the whole summer
full of moisture
the wet of their bodies through the water of walking
without a river to trod through

there is a slog to it
(living)
as there is a burden to the inaction
of thinking

and it comes through at particular moments
of being

so that the beaded glass of water
seems somehow magical
in the way it holds water both in and out
both within and outside it

(within)outside
outside(within)

each one of us as water
is water
if water

as the substance of ourselves
moves in and through and over us

we are rained down upon ourselves
and become ourselves better and wetter
soaked to the bone soaking
in the watery blood of muscle

what flexes within us
is reflection
in a body of water
of a mind seemingly at rest
but moving

in the way a river
seems still and turgid
until we float within it
and float away

take these words
for a sense of living in the world
for a way of being as if an object of the earth
for the pleasure of the ear

because we hear it
the water and the way
it wanders

through us and by us
because it moves for us
and forward

leaving us backwards with the thought

pulling us backwards against our will

to a few set words
or four
just a set of indefinite things
of an indefinite series

something like the living out of a life

asleep, awave, alive, awake