i stepped outside tonight

i stepped outside tonight
to escape the clutter of my life:
to nestle in the refuge of 80-year trees
and my very own sky; to draw with
shaky fingers the same arc of the
same sun that sundays gave me when I
was five and learning the seasons.
but as i laid down on my birth deck—
plyboard wonder of the ancient world—
i couldn’t anymore tell where the
sky ended and the boughs of the trees
began; nor even the comfortable
boundaries of a cloud swaying through
a nascent storm. all was one—uneasily tossed
in churn and sent out on its way.
nothing defined, all the same but not—
so i took my problems, my memories
inside again, where at least the clutter
was familiar.