Illustrous

To be honest, I’m a little sick

Of healthiness, the body

Curated like a garden

Landscape. I like gardens fine,

And good health to gardeners.

But wild is not wilderness

Per se, extremes exercised.

Wild is what is as it does.

Cloud dragons shadow the hills

Beyond that ridge on Dark Peak

Named Bleak Low, a kind of name

Which tells you, This is your tongue,

And you know what these names mean.

But it makes no sense. It’s bleak,

But it’s a high point. The sky

Is just as bright and dark grey

Here as on the next hill’s ridge.

This world wants nothing from me,

But I just keep on talking.

Junipers can make sunlight

Resemble moonlight at noon,

Not in their shade—in their light.

They can make a noon mesa

Echo the ghostly terrain

When a fading memory

Spent time in English Midlands.

Gold reverts to quicksilver,

Wilderness to emptiness

That can fool you like good health

Fools the wild and doomed body.