Inversion
By Barry Ballard
There is a tide which pierces the pores of the air.
These aerial rivers, let us not pollute their current.
- Henry David Thoreau on Kindness
It isn’t difficult to imagine
the world turned upside down and waking
to frictionless sky, or pricking the skin
of our own imagination, breaking
the early vapors apart. What has it cost
the body’s economy to distrust
compassion, to be suspicious in the stall
of an invisible river, to hush
our own brooding heart kneeling at its eroding
edge? Why shouldn’t it be the weak balance
of the “ought” resting on its back, dreaming
the shape of clouds from concrete, or opposing
thermal currents lifting the map from our hands,
or stars in windows where the conscience is screened.