Perigee, Apogee

"A riddle or the cricket's cry" 
                    ~ William Blake


Once, I slept on a beach wrapped 
in a woven blanket and could find

no word for the thrum of the tide 
between leaving and arriving, nor

for the way sand felt both hard
and soft under my shoulder. In 

its depths, invisible cities both
crumbled and reassembled through 

the night. The wind was a ghost 
I learned also went to bed, waking 

early just as fruit bats returned 
to their roosts on the cliffs. 

Held in this interval, I felt almost 
endless and untranslatable; but also,

small as a pebble in the throat
of a universe threaded with seams.