Read It and Weave

If the sun on my back
had fingernails,
if the wind whistled in the Dorian mode,
if the kindness of paper to my pen
could sing, then
my good foot would climb goat sure
the rock wall and my garden ticket, creased
and thumbed, allow the guards
to open the gates
of Pelican Bay State Prison.

But the hunger strike, these fifty days,
avoids light, masks the iron shadow
and confines all to a windowless
warp of the soul.

"No one lights a lamp
and sets it under a basket...'
but if you lift even a lip of the woven stories
there is light enough,
to read.