To imagine its size corral a proton in a thimble. You are that shy particle at the boundless centre. To imagine its depth trawl memory for the first eyes you saw, opening your own to the light. To imagine its taste, magnify all that has rained on summer gardens and the storms that strip lilacs of their scent.

Most days raging at long hair, at bad grades, at the lawn mowed by a loafer. And then overtaken by movies, quivering grief for a yellow dog. You never knew which part of the child to expect. It was called getting sentimental, folksy words for crazy.

In a black robe, in a mackintosh and bowler, in a suit tailored by Italians, Cortez stands on Superior. Ice is new to him - his heels slip. The stuck bull (his boots) pigeon toe through snow. He will not tumble - God does not fall. This pantheist bluff worked before. His beard and good timing brought him to shore, a serpent. Everyone is waiting for something. They might as well wait for me. Here they wait for Spring. And although he is sunned brown, flecks of red in his hair, Cortez is nothing like Spring. White Pine galleons rigged with cattails took to the lake at Wisconsin. The fat bow flattened the marsh, spilt the harvest, but mostly kept going. North. Dark waves on the great lake. The ocean inland sighs, knowing what comes next.

He might have given too much had the crow at dawn not reminded that saving a little for the next day is how it's always been done. He held back. Held back when seeds withered to let the real stuff out. The sun clamped the sprout heads, drawing matter into a bright vacuum. He held back when letters came from the bank, wanting to slug the mailman for saying, "Can't be good news everyday, you know." As if he made the news. The envelope mined valleys between his calluses. He left blood webs on the mortgager's pen. This day was given for one more roll at good luck. Horse-hair charms like Christmas ornaments strung along fencing, swept curses from the air. He hoped. And he held back when the rains did not. Too much necessity pooling in serious knots along the furrows. And again, when rain forgot what it was about and settled in mist over jungle hills to the south, letting earth become powder, he held back. Beanstalks stayed mum about secret destinations. Cloud bellies, just far enough from earth to be alien, were the untouched goal, a target for ambition.

i. At the peak of a mountainous high, the flat earth is more than a theory: it explains itself, a read page that lies from night to day, cold pole to cold pole, below and around. At its edge, the film of breath and life, buildings in cities and trees in the forest, all sentient and historical movement waver like the bug screen against an autumn window. It is time to visit the lost mirage, the water-bent air rises in lines of cartoon stink above our heads. We are left scratching wondrous lice. Our blood shared across imagined borders. It is time to divest in time, to let the dice scatter and disregard the numbers. It is time to bury the pedants, smoke the clichés and move on to an unbound measure that is neither deep nor wide. ii It was time that worried my teacher when she dropped a B in R-A-B-B-I-T and threw her speller at the class because we laughed at the cursive that would replace our stick scrawl. When the door opened next it was the principal who entered, and remained with us while teacher recovered. No one touched the prone speller, and its pages bled on the checkered floor in the margin between our desks.

i. She understands the weather by the face on the pond and has been waiting for rain all summer, bringing the lawn furniture inside, closing the windows to save the sills from water stains, only to drag the wicker chairs back into the sun and slide the panes open when the clouds fall away from the parroted sky. ii. Arguing with her lover, she prefers his anger deflected on the toaster, his eyes bugging, the tight brow stretched, wobbling in a funhouse mirror. It makes him rage all the more that she won't look at him. His cheeks get red like element wires, and she smiles in a way that brings the door to a slam behind him. iii. The taillights of the Buick streak in the puddles as he drives away. His headlights click across the gapped birches and night folds around the absence. She stands on her porch listening to the creaks and splashes of a forest without sun, or a moon echoing its light.

I have forgotten the shape of your hand, although I feel it in my own on the taxi ride through dark lanes. You, the small one, riding the hump between me and your girlfriend. I have too much time, it seems, and find myself a wedge between lovers, a bland distraction. It is my third week of drifting, asleep in knots on the floor. In the morning, you make oatmeal at the stove, the night shirt hanging low from your back, the world above your thighs uncovered. Now and then a spray of down. My thumb traces the scar along your index finger where the farm dog nipped you back on PEI. I smooth the cuticles you've bitten raw: you could lose everything with this ride. Later you tell me how she defines your love, like a jealous man, she guards it, and the thought of betrayal holds you back. I have barely moved toward you and you get closer each day. We drift from there. I get a job, a place in the mountains. You leave your girl for another. The last time I saw you - standing for the bus after trial, a block away - you cupped your lips with those hands, shouted, "I love you" with all the judges watching.

She wants me to believe only the rich make poems, and scream with her at the ivory men who never gave the chance to have the things she hates. I haul out sleepy examples, the dusty giants from fishing towns and loyalist towns, prairie towns and gutter alleys the ones with earthy half moons under their nails, the knots on their spines fused and aching. She answers that each gave up privilege to hit the road and rails, or to live on scraps in shacks near the crazy edge because brief inheritance was too much to satisfy. Without a conviction seeded in wealth only a fool would play with words and expect to be paid. Put down your pen, she said, You are pretending. I tried to believe and would have but a sound that will not be named called, kept calling, in a language unknown to me.