MEASURE
By Jenna Waggoner
Sometimes the sky is orange.
It stains you. It stains the people passing.
flexing limbs like silver leaves,
bending between shadow and light.
Beneath the orange sky
things slowly slip away;
bills to pay, the daily race,
running out of time and space.
Some of the dirt slides
from your stone-shaped mind.
You become a moth
among moths,
milking the sun's glow.
Now you know
what it means to walk the line
between lives.
As sunlight nears,
could you measure
the feeling it carries?
Could you measure
the migration of a million crows?
Could you measure the hunger
of the bluest whale down below?
Could you measure
the space between us? Could you
hold the world
and never let go?
If you listen
when the world asks,
not in meters or miles,
but in a different language
(containing length,
depth still):
Will you hear
when the world asks to live again,
and again, asks to remember?
You see: when the river
shines her understanding
from the undersides of fish
an onto the surfaces of your eyes;
You'll recall the taste of shadow and light,
and remember where you came from.
