After Merwin

Jason Nemec

The way we see
at each moment the air
is some god inside us
guiding our eyes, clutching
the back of our skull,
pivoting it like a camera –
a long slow pan into focus.

Or is it blindness
and does the earth have a voice,
a low register, a vibration
beneath our bare feet?

Feel our heels reeling,
gravity gone, a memory
of when the planet held us.
Imagine it: the bodies
lifting off, zooming up,
the sky inhaling,
vacuuming us

like dust; we will be plucked
from what we thought was
the one certain thing.