Landscape
       

Hang me, your honor, up with the furniture
the dictionary is out of words, out of pages

let me sleep with the shadows on the north face
let me sleep with the limestone, sleep with the ash
sleep with the winged insects captured there

let me dream the blank pages that were once a dictionary
let me run my fingers over the smooth Braille
let the images of each entry evaporate
into pockets of air of sleep of denim

the water is moving underground
there are so many of us and each desperate

I should go to Oakland
where no one has what they need
search the corners between Fruitvale and MacArthur
between High street and 73rd
for paper cups, taco shells, tootsie roll comic strips

in Japanese there's a character that means
searching for something
and a different character
that means searching for something you've lost

I open the dictionary again, still blank

Copyright © 2010 Judy Halebsky All rights reserved
from Sky=Empty
Western Michigan University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission