Flying Home

I meticulously stitch time through the embroidered sky,
  through its unpredictable lumps and hollows. I

am going home once again from another
  home, escaping the weave of reality into another

one, one that gently reminds and stalls
  to confirm: my body is the step-son of my soul.

But what talk of soul and skin
  in this day and age, such ephemeral things

that cross-weaves blood and breath
  into clotted zones of true escape.

What talk of flight time and flying
  when real flights of fancy are crying

to stay buoyant unpredictably in mid-air
  amid pain, peace, and belief: just like thin air

sketches, where another home is built
  in free space vacuum, as another patchwork quilt

is quietly wrapped around, gently, in memoriam.

from Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), the Norton World Poetry Anthology, Language for a New Century (New York: W.W.Norton), and forthcoming in Blue Nude: New Selected Poems & Translations 1980-2010.