Now Let’s Sit for a Spell

The calm shade of a pine falls
On my back and lifts the heat.
It works like a charm—this cloak
That takes off the weight of light.

Dread and doubts will scorch the fruits
Of hours with no work for words.
If you can’t chill, then sit still,
Said the thoughts to the old doll

Stashed in the back of the mind,
Left in the back of the car,
Just a word now by the pine.
Look in the eyes of that word—

It’s like the head of the doll.
Spell. It’s all just air in there,
The bare space in which words mean
Things. Dread. Doubt. Pine. Shade. Mind. Still,

It works. If it means, it charms,
A spell, but that means it’s hard
To split the charm from its parts,
Head from space, shade from the pine,

What it was the word once meant
From dread what it meant changed things.
In the shade, the mind knows words
Are spells that make the light mean

And hard, hard to take. They mean
That to mean a thing it means
There are more things that will be,
That must come next. That’s the thing.

If you’ve got words for that thing
And you know what they mean, then
Shade or no shade, thoughts or not,
You can’t help but know there’s next.