Which sensation the illness, which sensation the fear? Which opens a forest? Sometimes I walk there, just ahead of certain kinds of pain. To lead the pain, not to follow—I begin to hear as a language, endlessly adaptive. The forest cicada is voiceless. Its bronzy call—rising through the follicles of my hair—is made by the click of its wings, which are nearly transparent. The nerve cicada has long wings, darkly veined with the pulse of preparing for flight. I sit down on the forest floor, two fingers at my wrist. Patches of moss on smooth stones—a cloudless green. Wind, borrowing color from fallen leaves. Waiting is a sense beyond the five, not a threshold. A trail of ants wanders close and falls into the sand hollow that my weight will deepen eventually into a funnel.

patience, belated perseverance (1)