Strawberry Moon
After walking for three days, my knees
accidentally bumped the knees of the kissy couple
sitting across from me. I peered out the window
of the train at the landscapes of my childhood—
fields of wheat, flatness, sprouting wind farms—
on the way from Eberswalde to Berlin.
I closed my eyes, swam naked
under a full strawberry moon, with a horse
tarot lady who I have yet to meet.
There are questions I ask myself
as I walk. Ever see a duck hop
like a rabbit? Ever catch a hermit silhouetting
as an emperor or a fool? Ever hear a sound
that sounds like another sound?
There are answers as well. A gunshot branch
snapping from the top of a pine tree. The grunt
when it hits the ground. A creaky door
in the woods. The red, white, and
yellow wildflowers tickled by the wind
outlining a farmer's crop.
In the evenings I constructed a tent
of ideas, when I allowed my mind
to fill in, as I used to before the age
of black squared obsession,
only to be torn down again
in the morning.
In the night, from somewhere, a voice,
like a siren weaving a spell through the trees,
sang– I want to be with you
everywhere– so loud that I couldn’t sleep
and my head rang with the laughter
that should always come after pain.
This time, once again, I followed the yellow shells,
backlit by a blue ocean, and I passed three nests
built for storks but I only saw one stork
and her black beaked babies. Each nest
looked like a tower from the windows
of which I imagined we had just fallen.
As we were falling towards the ground,
we uselessly flapped our arms
like hummingbird wings, fast as we could,
with panicky sadness, but then we spotted
the setting sun.
We froze in the air, as we forgot about time
and savored the view of the burning orange sky,
together, just moments before death.