Workshop

By DeAnna Jones

I listen to pens, pencils,
rough palms
and cheap paper,
occasionally
I hear a breath.
If I keep my head down
and my pen moving
they write
catching themselves
at phrases,
spilling passages,
hands on ther foreheads,
curled against
their stomachs,
and I try not to look up,
I try to see with
the wide lens,
my eyeball periphery,
arc of light
like the kind
that comes
at high altitudes
in an airplane,
travelling from one
world to the next,
where from a round window
a line of ether
spreads in a curve
out of the clouds.
I’ve seen the earth
as a ball,
as it really is,
moving away,
growing and heaving.
I’ve seen
the illumination of air
that circles across
the mold
of the dark body,
what I see now at this table
when I don’t really look,
the bend into gravity
particles flaring away
at the cusp,
a dust of momentum.