Sometimes I long to be the woodpile,
cut-apart trees soon to be smoke,
or even the smoke itself,
sinewy ghost of ash and air, going
wherever I want to, at least for a while.
Neither inside nor out,
neither lost nor home, no longer
a shape or a name, I’d pass through
all the broken windows of the world.
It’s not a wish for consciousness to end.
It’s not the appetite an army has
for its own emptying heart,
but a hunger to stand now and then
alone on the death-grounds,
where the dogs of the self are feeding.