Exposure

As pots fill with rain from hairline leaks, tiny
separations of roof and tar, I think about
the Sistine Chapel: its man created vault
of sky restored by computers manned
by diligent nuns. A fresco is repaired by
digital angelry: minute gradations restored
to the naked eye. Once, I volunteered
to lose a baby, sold half my books,
shaved my skull bare as the lunar sea.

I remember the night we held the tent
together on the edge of a cliff instead
of each other, how the stars bore down
when we looked at them once the storm
ended, a thousand miles from home.
I could have swum the length if I tried.
I could feel the sky spinning, follow its
massive pull as I resisted easy sleep
in favor of memory.

I felt the celestial tug noted firmly in sketch
books by Leonardo who knew everything
before he'd been told, who diagrammed
war machines and human hands with equal
grace in books preserved and translated
after his death. He was drawn to dissect
even as you tore apart clocks and
questioned the meticulous weightings
of time on the smaller parts. The Greeks
sensed biology before a lens was made
to view its proofs; I never did.

It's not easy to breathe when the stars
are watching by the millionfold, to move
when the rope is yards off the ground,
tied between trees for a walk near the sun.
Gravity pulls like rest before the body
falls like Icarus after solar proximity and
tensile pride. As always, a whirl of resolutions
and excuses: the body turning with
the weight of unmapped stars.