Prairie Octopus, Awake

The night’s turned everything to junipers

shagged & spooked with cerulean chalk-fruit,

weird berries whiffing of Martians in rut.

I forget this isn’t my universe

sometimes. Sometimes I think I was falling

most of my life to land here, a lone skirl

in the immaculate hush. In my world

I waltzed with my ink-self, my black shantung.

Owls swallow vowels in stilled trees. It’s not

sleeplessness, it’s fear of what the dark will

do if I don’t keep a close eye on it.

Blue minutes leak from the pricked stars’ prisms,

seep into the earth unchecked. Just as well—

I’ve hardly enough arms to gather them.