the geometry of everything

i trace the geometry of everything:
these words
this discount pen
the angle of the lamplight on the page
my face--or is it yours?--
seeking congruences:
points of balance, absence,
overlap.
          spirits haunt the compost heap
where all my clipped ambitions sleep
and dream themselves to dirt.
there is a map of how we grow
and twist and burst inside each wall
of each wooden cell. there is a map
the size of the world
laid out beneath our feet.

admit it: you know as well as i
that there is no accident
to tonight's transparent sky
no mystery to the moon:
we name it,
you and i: we are doing it right now. it lives and dies
and lives again, this smoke ring
this solid shifting thing
because we twist our lips
and breathe and trace
with the mind's hands
the contours of what would otherwise go
unfelt.
          we snip the world with scissor words
until we each see our own face.

we who have senses to sense
and names to name,
we make this place.