NEW! Michael Robins poems

Michael Robins

Three Poems


APPEARANCES

For the hours in which a silhouette is cast,
the evening’s kept awake by another form.

Now it’s now again, the snow bears a pattern
for the shapes who nearly meet in the snow.

Once a covered slope was manner for taking,
a profile for each rise in the conversation.

The streets under light are empty time again
for linen, tables & chairs of a festive spread.

Once, I built a frame, hoarded convention
to counter the sound a hungry circle makes.

The evening becomes a figure, lovers sleep
in a fold of white sheets & the appetite grows.


GREEN SHOULD A FOOT PASS THROUGH

Because we live in comparison, right or left,
sunny side up, I’m torn belief by the whole,
the moon & star together in a red full tone.
The yellow cranes divide the sky, one world
from the next while an iron frame takes shape,
fashions a skyline, the breeze along its path.
It’s nice outside, nicer yet a steam that climbs
ruptured, a funnel scattered above the street.
What could be more enchanting: the chimney,
wisp that skims a valley in the break of day?
A man, a woman, twisting links under cover
or is the house on fire, a lantern by the draft
& now a window sand, ash divorced in ash?
Embers or glaciers, the desert or via city map,
one may gather or unravel the forms around.
If, later, you find the time to unearth a source,
reap the slow uncoupling. You may dissolve
a frost along the line that stays its silver tone,
the childhood that arrives much later in life.


WE ARE SMALL UNDER A RUMOR OF THE TONGUE

We were awoken by the flood, drops of night
inside the larvae when something’s overturned
our log. Blind is collective memory, inch to inch
where those have gone for sugar in a kitchen.
We have so many legs. They begin at the knee,
extend the air as if for an empty glass of water
in the darkness of a room. The workers gnaw
within the circles between our jaws, their world
a narrow stair cut tall & back without a railing.
Larvae or pupae what’s the difference? They’re
ours, white at birth, they’ll fight until they die.
A wind thwarts the grass, footpaths that tumble
like the branch end to end toward other yards,
other towns. Underground, we pile mounds
to protect our queen, our mother sealed inside
her chamber. We carry twenty times our weight.