My motives caravan
through a red, peerless desert.
Water travels just ahead
slightly faster than either I
or my mirror glass needs
can go.
Out here,
straws and dictionaries
present serious problems.
As though it were dead skin
scraped from the devil’s heel
by a pumice stone,
my purest motive blows
around the others.
If I flew my determinations
like kites,
attached to my stringy nerves,
could they rise to Heaven
and beg for a cloud?