love a pocket universe 

i will never fear smallness. instead,
i will put on my oldest shoes & try to walk
to the seam. i think if there wasn't
a big capitalism that scientists would be poets
& so would school bus drivers &
cake decorators & people whose hands
grow callouses where they hold the machine. 
i am in favor of all theories that involve cloth.
the pocket universe is a belief that we are,
with all our pinballs & all our sunspots,
just a vessel for lint & coins in the great 
pants of the everything. autumn is coming
& soon my skin will turn pale from the dark.
in the cold, i become a moon. astronauts crowd
my face with their worries. often when
i am doing laundry, i will find seeds that i 
collected from the ground. i am, for all intents
& purposes, just a crow without feathers.
i think the animals know more about
the other universes than us. a bear tells a story
by the light of the stars that once his great-grandfather
walked all the way out of the pocket. was swallowed
by a comet & never came home. the point
of his departure, marked by the constellation.
ursa major. his youngest son 
followed not long after. ursa minor.
do you think dreams are contained in one pocket
or do they bleed? is our strangeness the other worlds
trying to meet us? them, in a nightmare, 
of a convenience store with the neon 
sky whining. i repeat i am not scared of smallness.
in fact, on most days it is my only comfort.
that my mouth can fit inside yours. that
when the great hand decides to reach 
& sift for us, that we will be smooth & round.
easily missed in the field. the bears crawl into 
their caves. a pocket in a pocket in a pocket. 
the first frost on the tip of the year's tongue.