Looking for Nests

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With Aiks and Eeunks
sojourning
the East Side     of the Range of Light

they come to a warm well
                        in a crowd of people

The water is being heated
in blue
                                                     fifty-gallon... drums
and the hikers soak             over fires

They are naked and relaxed
                           and they’ve paid for it

Pahn envies them
to be unstressed
                                                        in exposed
                                                                         and human
                                  congregation

But he is looking
for a spring of his own
that comes from the earth
through its own flowing
that needs no payment
that is warm
                                             by its nature

…

Egairia/Er-Illith
walks
in these mountain                             gardens

She looms in the woods                                                           
                                                 the sources of           water—

And Junipera appears            here    and there
sprighting about
                                                              as if pointing out possibilities
as Pahn walks the paths


looking for a perfection
                                                      Like Aiks

He finds homeless nests
                                                                in the vegetation
some depressed in the gravel     between    the plants
some carved out    with shears    others
bent twigs
                                                       where someone has lain

Hopeful
                                                        and doubtful
Junipera stands beside him            looking

…

At lunch
Pahn is a patchwork of nudity    standing

aroused
 
                                                             embarrassed
                                                              in front of his peers feeling
the inevitability of it

The forces of popular lunch    push
                                                            him    against Junipera
as he wonders     what she’ll say
of his erection      She is
                                                            unbothered
                                                               uninterested

…He awakens
                                   to a warm morning
the kind of clouds
variable
slightly unstable
                   on the fringes
                          of low pressure—
a chance of a shower

.

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