Scott Challener
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the
world—D.H. Lawrence
If only I am borrowed by the fluidity of cars,
their slow winter-river’s burn,
if only by the shirtless confabulists in jeans
at work on broken trucks which like toys
reserve the right to be broken,
if only by this light through the green densities
of a leaf of jade, the glowing through the aloe-thickened meat,
if only I am borrowed by this succulence of light
—in which the gulls preen, in which a squadron of swallows
lifts—moving now on the ochre curtains
like a dancer breathing across the floor, almost
touching, glimpsing, me, now in retreat, then
I may be broken, fixed, glowed through. Dance
and soften, and break, part of the first shadows.