Transmutation

Fevered beneath the sheets, 
I watch the hours burn like a slow fuse 

towards sunburst, when the light’s blithe vitality 
will make damning insinuations, 

insisting upon action, though 
my body protests with its leaden ache. 

But for now, the breeze planes 
a cool curl of air off the creek 

and leaves susurrate with quiet reassurance. 
Under the lid of night, the world 

boils with profligate beauty, a heady brew 
of honeysuckle wafting through the screen, 

field luminous with daisies, 
a fallen constellation mythologizing 

the mountain's slumped shoulders. 
If I could make myth from the massif 

of my own ravaged body, 
I would lay it down like the blighted pines 

sagging with a soft croak of elegy 
and rise over the shadowed grass 

where life is lifting into the black: 
a nebulous breath of pollen, mayflies 

drifting beneath the star-flung heavens, 
weightless and roving toward a mutable form.