Ahead

 
Been subdued for over a week by a throat infection;
the antibiotics turning the other half of me
inside out. Short walks and short air, but it's going.
I walk longer in the afternoon sun. Everything is green and full;
                                                             how it wanted to be.

Nettles fall across the paths because they're too tall. The grass
is higher than my eyes, as I walk the dragonflies
take to the air, as do the moths, forced to fly
in negative. I walk farther, faster. Sweat some of the bad
and excess good out. I stop in a field, on a valley. Sky goes white,

lowers. Humid. I buried a friend eleven years ago
without sun, now in third person. A magpie's toe
scratches oak as it flees. I mimic this:
                                                         age in the arches
of my feet. It is hard to imagine no fractions.
Every thing is whole, in whichever stage.
Nature shows us no halves; no accuracies.
Just bigger or smaller. Dead or alive.
Maybe a shadow is a part, and at night
breath is again the whole.
Then breath becomes the sound of a stranger
standing in a field. Whole, yet divided.