Comfort

Comfort

I gaze at the long clouds that enrobe
the sky, the clothing I return to
for warmth. I feel
all that has amassed around me,
the objects that speak to me
a language I understand—
the cars and trains and people
and money to carry a man's shame
to market, to print a life and publish
its trouble. This is not comfort,
but an endless response to why I live.
If there was any way to translate
the sunlight I feel on my skin
I would utter the syllables of a wide glance,
proven untranslatable.
I would broaden life to a continuous
discovery and live with what courage
I could afford, knowing
the face I see in dreams, the breath
that answers singing,
the rainfall of late evening as it trickles
through groves and grain,
grass and graves. Only
the vanishing world eases
my suffering, all my ghostly intentions
harbored in sleep. I wash my hands
with oceans, alongside those buried
at sea, with the clash of the ongoing water
that carries away every slippery stone.