My mind is rustling
leaves, sound shadows
and deadening echoes.

The feel of his proximity
and the wall when a blind
man is walking too close.

Like a black panther, it
finds its way by vibrations,
when the night gets too dark.

In the morning, it is fresh again,
a patch of parsley green moss
peering through the paper-thin flesh

of birch trees. The ones Ellison plays
peekaboo behind, and the reason doves
console each other, and why the universe

is so cold and silent and empty, yet arrives
at my doorstep like a bouquet of flowers.