Jin Zhu, Workbench, KZSU (photograph)
IV.
A mantle surrounds the body.
We start out hottest on the inside.
This heat gradually reduces until
at some point, we cease being ourselves
and become air.
A membrane surrounds the body.
This is the definition of a point of contact
(the surface of a flame is one such location).
Listen, you said, there is a limit
to what can be felt.
A dominant sense of the mantle
surrounding the body. Even so,
in force and splendor,
if a locus is a collection
of points, the horizon
is a seam. See how the sky
transmutes itself at the point
where the earth seals to air.
This is the thinnest
kind of connection.
If it could, the earth
would throw off the sky.
A sematic warning:
at night the sky is always purpling.