Drive fifteen miles north
into the forest between here
and the next place people
are bound to be, leave the car
with the keys still in it
in a rest area, walk some distance
across the leaf beds below
the huge old trees until
you cannot be seen from the road;

take off everything — poor clothes, 
random adornments, your long-inadequate
glasses, the bandage on your left arm;
lie on your back and stare up along the trunks
toward the sky that’s a rare shade
of black-tinged blue between the crown-shy
upper limbs of — what are these, oaks
or maples? You lift up a leaf to your eyes
and try to define and decide
but without glasses it’s all you can do 
not to close your eyes and say, enough
with naming things. Any other day
you’d have known without thinking.
Today, thinking is forbidden. No more
definitions, only one more decision
to be made — and the former wound
is already bleeding so even that 
seems to be complete.

What a sky to be under.
What a bed to enjoy.
What a time to be alive.