december 21, 2010. 20th birthday. my first flowers from a boy.

don't be thinkin i'm gettin all sappy and shit. i ain't.

i am not particularly good

with words

i know them, i suppose,

as one knows a finch in the leaves

but i cannot say i know them

as a lover knows another's pelvis

or as the finch knows

the wind

smoking is disgusting.

no exceptions.

i just reread this

and wanted to cry

i hope he is doing something delightful

Today,

I found myself as concerned with a rock

as was Auden with line endings.

I thought, this rock, my God, how deliberately it slopes,

and then became embarrassed by my own straight back.

Here, I can smell the dirt.

I cannot count the undisturbed anthills

or the hawks

winding relays over my head,

their bright black wings cutting

through the sun.

Here, I can touch

deeply

the ground, who for me opens

like a mouth for breath:

not heaving, not clicking through cracked sidewalks,

but with the calmness

of an inward blossom of air in slumber—

breathing because it is rythmic.

I have known so scarcely the breast of a mountain,

the softness of green on rock sides.

My hands and feet

are sweating things amongst these whorls of grass,

these wild, girlish strawberry stalks,

and I cannot quite still the quiver in my neck

beneath a hornet’s silent nose.

I do not know, I say, to the distant bears,

where to begin walking,

but perhaps they know how little there is to teach

an uncalloused thing like me.

here, i can smell the dirt.