This is what I mean by a riot of openings:
five-petal leaves grow dripping
bones from the center vine. The caterpillar eats
the east of each leaf like a koan, cracking them
into fields of reasonable inches.
At least I see them as bones the way they rattle in this surveying wind.
This is what I mean by the ocher cracks open:
my life is a test here I snag my mind upon.
The process of thinking a chrysalis a pushing through.
Are my fingers my paints a crackling fire?
What reason withholds my center?
Or do I mean centering. This is what I mean
by a wide-open concern: The Giant Sphinx
Moth with its curves of tongues.
Once the feathers were only a private inside.
Once the words inside me were captive, cocooned.