My idea of abstraction is white lightning

My idea of abstraction is white lightning 
                                                                Jack Whitten

Halfway between Gonyon and Ophelia     imminent splendor.     It doesn’t matter what I don’t know.

Clouds creating a blue fissure in the sky,     whose grammar     whose sadness hurries forth?

I want to speak to order: soybeans, corn, wheat rows browned to torpor.

Mercy.     Protozoan, water-shorn,     hotly I listen     in the pines for my green name.     Whoever can

stop reasoning,   stop.     Is it too much to ask     to be remade     I who’ve just begun?

Adagio of light, copper-hued diadem

hanging on twilight’s hem, Virginia sun— I’m yet released from the

sharp language of being: make me another by morning     lest I stay

in this vestibule     wholly unmade.

From Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020). Copyright © 2020 by Taylor Johnson. Reprinted with the permission of the poet.