Doug Ramspeck
Clairvoyant
The city fell asleep in my arms.
What is important here is the concept
of a pillow of streets.
It doesn’t matter what the dead believe,
their ontology of stillness.
It is enough that someone,
somewhere, cuts out his eyes and holds
them in his palms.
The work is never completed. We imagine
our lives as blood on the brain, as walking
through a warren of streets beneath
a naked eyeball of moon.
Skull moon, salt moon, prophecy moon.
It was Horace who described tossing aside
his shield and fleeing the Battle of Philippi,
which is one way to describe a life:
to imagine sitting tomorrow on a park bench
with a sack lunch perched in the lap.
The earth rotating more rapidly at the equator
than farther north or south,
and yet the sunlight strangely
incorporeal, as though it is dreaming us.
And the pigeons, too fat
for flight, pecking their way into tomorrow,
which is all we know to hope for or ask.
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