SALT PLUMES
A pleat of light has been here twice
back to the day and the day back
a bearing refused at its source
the stalled mercury fused in its glare
with no conjecture to mark the limit
the motion is modified
convolutions of ancient scripts
half drawn half animal birth
the arch of the back
one surface
one depth
one changing shape
an apology for
crossing the pulse of offspring
•
Uncommon offerings commonly intuited
a wooden bowl with a gilded edge
five dark stone knives
a small clasped vessel for oil with a floating wick
flanked by two wax birds
space is a factor whose
mapping disturbs
our conversation
a prospect of careful planes
tended by argument and birdsong
then abandoned to palindrome
the flex of barrier
and immaculate reticence
relent in equal shares unseparated
by edge or rhythm’s orientation
amid the subtle claims of threnody
no other sense of praise
than wonder
•
Predation
mythic proxy inflected
the unanimous struggle of particulars
primed in situ
white for decay
red for the eye
blue beneath the snow
a cold wind noticed too late
now equitably disposed
something brought to completion
though the worm was in it
beyond the forms of Baal
•
Emptied markers burning in the ruts
deliberative motives
more in balance than real
fixtures of an arguing anxiety
more generous less fragile
neglected by speculation
plainest increase finds the barb
in the morose distortions of small forms
and the thin yellow words of the infatuation
it brings its own set of questions
like something brought to be abandoned
by the side of the road
•
Description is what has been taken away
the infinite lost in the simulacrum of displacement
a number not in arrangement but farther on
not in the distance but insistence
the hours gained in anonymity
the years lost word by word
contradicted by the myopia of its internal logic
uphill favors sediment
imago the gift imparted
the cross-eyed shuffle of expedience
too late the song too late the door flies open
too late the spoken mercies too late the fabric bone
•
Wandering ligatures accelerate expansion
to primary acquisition
nomadic recourse
absorbed in gerundive detail
reclaims the discretionary pursuit
essentials
the exactions of light
extolling the riot of genetic ambivalence
no ulterior duplicates
no delivered verges
in shallow equilibrium
only the instruments make rapid movements
adapting to internalized mechanisms
adjusted by accretion
•
Proliferation
and impossible replicas
regret or loss
become a gesture for that limit
schemes of evidence
offered in contradiction
•
As intimate as doubt
all that is personal in chance
distinguishes one to one from
the one from the other
reinterpreted in the dark
and shared only with number
the objects in the room
the articles on the desk
are an assent to a consequent perfection
that is abandoned in moving on
pursuing neither a conclusion nor
a new point of entry
what had become unacceptable
is now overburdened only partially remembered
timed to the word denied with nothing
else to take its place or make its order
sustained by mechanism and the simulation
of some capable version or familiar resource
a preemptive predecessor quietly virtual provides
something other than an option
July-August, 2001
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