Stephen Healey poem

Stephen Healey
 
CIRCLES
 
Funny how the cookie
just sits there containing
its wisdom and raisins.
Or does it secretly expand
beyond the baker’s mind
to include the concentric cooing
of mourning doves? Yes or no,
the sound is delicious
and recedes before a human ear
can have it. If we reach out
things mourn us, things fly away.
Night forgets to light up
and day’s excrement knows
where you’ve been. By the time
I get to X, summer has burned
holes in my blank, the smell
proves I’m less figment
than flesh of wayward fruit.
You are here and can go anywhere,
says the talking streetmap.
Under the ocean? Hell,
I’d like to be your alibi
for a season, or a circle
meeting me at every point
along the curve. Even July’s
purple-propellered phlox
feel inert sometimes, then
the door to the closeted garden
opens. A sweetness prevails.
Something lands in the birdbath.
 
From Verse, Volume 18, Numbers 2&3 (2001). All rights reserved. For details about this issue, see Arielle Greenberg's poem.