NaPoWriMo Day 17...Shape

Yet again, I wrote this in my notebook on the plane from Atlanta to Hartford, CT on Wednesday, but I just typed it up.

Shape

I wonder about the cloud and the grass, 

the moon, how things round or sharp 

glisten into the open world, where can I 

find a true shape? the sour apple, 

the wheat tassel, the river bend, 

the cliff face, the moon beams of  

my fingernails. I forget sometimes 

these bones beneath my muscle, 

I forget I’m a shape, too, like a grass 

blade or a tap root. I’m a thing, an it, 

an object that moves. I have a frame, 

a fine coat of fur, if you skin me 

and collect my pieces, I could become 

a truer self, a blanket, a purse, 

an ivory inlay, something with purpose. 

I could be carved into something 

to be looked at, observed, admired, 

praised. My good bones could be 

ground up into a fine meal, and you 

could dig me in with the soil  

and give myself to root and bug. 

I wonder what my true shape is 

a beetle wing, an earth worm, 

a chrysalis, a curved ivy vine, 

the rain to wash me away. 

I forget sometimes my molecules. 

Nothing exists, no barrier between 

myself and the world, I am everything. 

I have no walls, this skin, if you look close, 

closer, it contains a sun, a galaxy, 

the stars; it contains bird wings and bird songs 

there are no borders, no lines drawn. 

It sheds itself into another self, without self. 

Assume two degrees of separation, a shape 

away from a shape, we are all given names 

fingers, toes, noses, chins, lips, good bones. 

Ocean, blue whale, mountain peak, snow 

human being. 

Shapes within shape, names within name, 

laying down our walls and fences, borders 

and lines mapped out to lay our claim, 

to define one thing from the next, 

even though we are everything.