the way the firs have brushed out

in a very frondy, thrilled way

under this rain—I won’t say I’m ready for company. I’d like you all

at a comfortable radius, a hoopskirt of distance, a duel’s pace away.

I’m frilled and alert but afford me the stern

circumference kept of the blindfolded child playing pin the

tail on the donkey, the tetherball snapped

taut to the pole. Keep me at a formal VOUS of

separation, the kind expanse of LEI to allow

that closer makes no sense just now, that I’m unknown

to you, unfamiliar enough that a breadth

given to judges, officers, teachers might be endowed

to me as well, that we each have an otherness whose power we

haven’t fathomed yet