you've been gone finding

you come back hailing smoke
and raining moss, hair unwilling
and a little crazed -
you are rifling through all the impossible questions
making philosophy professors chairs creak -
i can almost hear the pages
slither past.

you've been gone finding
         yourself.

all the
chalk-tongued chatterers
telling us This is how the world works
are laying thick
and clock sure -
         you swipe at this wildly
you are saying
with the life in your eyes,
study,
study with me:
         the raining copper tongues
         and frogs croaking bulbous
         the furl of bark when it is stripped


you are asking
         with your heavy wet sleeves
         stitched in water-rust
for us
to find
our own meaning
or be lost
in it