I remember you,
relentless oaks,
still holding up
Armageddon
in the West
and a moaning gray
hereafter
in the East.

I came back from the
land of questions,
stitched from chaos,
where everything waits,
or at least tries
for a moment,
to step out of the
dazzling loop of
existence.

I thought you could
show me the door
to the unmanifest,
to see if I could find
that blissful nothingness
they spoke of,
but even solitude, it seems,
is crowded.

Birds cleanse
the air with audible stars
till the ancient
ones appear:
a herd of lights,
the slowest glass stallions,
gleaming like first love
in their distant rebellion,
and more alive than
any human—
one thing I can count on
to never leave.

Just an eternity past sundown,
just a few steps past silence . . .
only one thought between
the void and
All That Is.

Leave me alone now.
I'm learning to breathe.

Patricia Joan Jones