POEM: So I Am A Brick

A red brick, solid and stiff accustomed to inclement weather
Stiff and sharp where I have never been sharp
Chipped for all my years of being steppe on
Green from the algae

In my head I want to be softer
For everything wants to be softer where
They are hard, where there is chipping
And a rough surface.

But as a brick I am incapable of dreaming
Lacking a brain stem, the limbic matter,
A prefrontal cortex.

When I awake the light is trembling
And I speak this language.
I am able to interpret it.

It is fall and the light catches the tree tops
Looking down at me, singing
At the tops of their tree lungs,
Burrowing with knotted fists into
The soil-gone-mud.

I make my way through rounded objects.
Light is one of these rounded objects
Dripping onto the walkway bleaching
Everything in its path,
Those other bricks asleep, tucked in
By moss and the smell of nuts in the air
(This autumn tastes like walnuts in the back of my mouth
Whenever I suck in the cool air.)

But the light avoids me, though my blood
Is a ruddy red. A port wine of clay aging
Aging in the yellow laughter of a folding sun.
I am geologic, granite bends to me.
I wear limestone for fingernails
Everything I write is whitened,
White, white, white hot.