Out here

Everything is set in motion out here:
this earth turns before my eyes,
it rocks beneath my feet. The sun
advances and retreats its horizon,
and winter, like a long shadow, is cast
then evaporates easy as birds
wing their way home. Out here life is simple,
and a poet's sweetest metaphor
is trite because life is everywhere.
Why are we not all out here?
Where life can clench us in its firm grasp
and hold us together, hold our racing fighting hearts
from turning against one another.

We are spitting cats, clucking hens
all stacked on top of, packed too tightly in there:
where the earth is flat and still
where the clocks march blindly
over a dancing sun. In there, a poet's most trite metaphor
is a miracle of sweet clean water.
I was born in there;
but my life began out here.

What makes sense in a dream
is insanity upon waking.

In there we are sleepwalkers,
disassembling the very systems we need to survive
and reassembling them as disposable toxins,
when all the while there is no where left
to throw them and the toxins seep inside.

Out here simple needs awake us
and the madness that we carry with us,
like a weight of snow upon our shoulders,
evaporates easy as we walk towards home.