Cigarettes proved harder to give up

than milk

but after 2 hours

I could taste the butter of walnut

and after 4 the damp wool of falling leaves,

after 8, the dollhouse sigh of moss

and all night long my lungs burned

in the blue flame of the living air

High under the trees

I sleep as on an ocean floor

while the weather rages the surface.

I sleep the grave, watery dance of the kelp

in wintry light

and I say,

I would not like to disappear

in this depth,

not quite yet—