Trucks on either side of us like fists, like cities.

Steep green against the highway. Cows

and caved-in, slat-gray shanties

Someone hung her voice up on a hook.

Willows dip their limbs in the shallows

Shall we gather, shall we gather, shall we

Blue cracks in the plaster sky and

everything opening along the road:

violets, trillium, azalea, the guts of deer

have become one.

I’m not in my body yet, she said. As if without skin, she said.

Not solid.           Like

this, and she opened a book by a painter

who renders herself as skinless.

“How do I know I’m not a brain in a vat?” says the skeptic.

“Because I have two hands,” says the empiricist.

At the rest stop men are like trucks, their bulk set

smack in the center of the walk, enormous boots.

We have to cut among them              their talk