Border

Jstuby, "Vernal pool at the top of
Enchanted Rock, Texas," 1998

We’re nothing but, and nothing if not,
bounded. Skin touch air, bee on petal,
a water strider riding surface tension—
we delineate self through a land of this
not that, edges so important some get
their own names: the vermilion border,
an ecotone, a scarp. It’s summer on the
Llano Uplift, and sweat stings my eyes,
blurs every bit of borderland. The hard
shapes the hawk sees soften, become
permeable, interpenetrate—lost in an
edgeless place, I forget all my names.