These Universes

There are infinite universes here,
kempt in the shadows between the pads of my fingers,
they swim in currents of tarragon fields
chopped down by tilling machines
set free from the earth and pushed to flowing,
they are kept clean from impurities by the quiet breath of time and the liquid soap bubbles of the lapping present
oh, how it smacks against time,
creating thick froth in its wake,

and beneath the pads of my fingers
I am
beyond an astronaut,
beyond the nautical deep sea diver
I am

steeling seaweed against gale force currents,
battling sirens away with fists and kisses;
I am an old splintered board
cracked and given character by the salt of the sea,
harvested from distant lands and set into place to be towed
back and forth along an ocean
current railroad, housing those who belong elsewhere, just like me.

beneath the fingerprints that tell
more lies about me than truth,
I am
beyond a man of the deep clay caked earth,
beyond a man of the whispering sky
I am

and the space between us,
like the space between this screen
and my permanent stamp that recurs
like a whisper over everything I touch,
is shrinking ever nearer;

as infinite as the polar universes
created through my synaptic patterns
and as finite as each molecule holding it all together,

somehow these are closer than I could have imagined.