Lizzy Burnam 🐞

Discipline, discipline, discipline, 
the sun seems to scream—
and then betrays herself, 
burning out behind a cloud. 
Blames it on the moon, for she’s
a chronic good-for-nothing, 
or else it was the earth’s own 
flights of fancy: flirting and dying
by land, by forest, by sea, 
equal parts wildfire and tsunami. 
Discipline, discipline, discipline, 
the sun says, just one hot coal 
in your hand, and the early dusk 
will fade into a daylong riparian dream.
Let yourself stumble, she means, 
in the direction of drowning, 
only to float as far as that river goes 
and come up craving evaporation, 
an atmospheric anonymity. 
The moon is not the only mother
of cycles, you know. There’s also
something gained and lost 
in the freezing and unfreezing, 
the fungus and its meal of bones. 
Discipline, discipline, discipline. 
There’s no heaven up here, the sun 
says, ha ha ha, it’s just me! 
She soothes herself by making a mirror 
from the rippled black surface
of a gasoline leak. A deeper drill 
ought to do it—yeah, or a little coffin
built from the broken shells 
of an acorn seed. Here lies a star
who slept through morning. 
Here lies a raindrop who refused 
to return to the ocean, 
even as the sun’s pointed finger 
bore a hole through the sky
and illuminated the vast emptiness 
between them, a space that needs 
filling, no matter the cost.