When you tell me to run, I can’t help but wonder
if you really mean me or the busy blue heron
to the right of me, its neck like an enchanted oboe
charming the residents of the river where fish
swarm in wild despair—because surely this danger
is a farce, surely not all gators bite. To the insect,
infinity is just beyond every leaf. To the heron,
lakes are just puddles imagining themselves
to be little universes. At least, this is what you tell me.
When you find me weird and wanting, I can’t help
that poetry is just consciousness pushed through
a puddle. So many minds, so many puddles like pores
over an aquifer of thought. And all these lakes are
grounding points, radial compasses around which
we orient ourselves. Head north-lake-west to the
boutique, south-lake-east to the mechanic. We map
ideas onto ideas like nested islands until we ascend
to the top floor of our minds, taking that little
spiral staircase and keeping that little spiraled shell
in which our sleeping minds lay like curled arachnids.
At night, my thoughts light up like moths at a bonfire.
When you pluck every feather from every swan
from every lake and count them all twice over,
only then will you learn that when you go to sleep,
the one who wakes is still you.
Oliver Brooks (he/they) is a trans poet and MFA student at Florida State University. His work has appeared in New Delta Review, Cream City Review, Honey Literary, Variant Literature, 3Elements Review, and elsewhere, and he serves as poetry editor for Southeast Review. Find Oliver online @oliverbrooks.bsky.social and oliverbrooks.weebly.com.
