this morning I eat the clock
the din the palpable hands
the cord and all
a brave cake
and after that I am still
I live by the river without a word
but my poor worn gun
time is a woman I burn to serve
Time as thin as pain,
yesterday lessened
and pretty,
we invent a bespoke
weather of the hour
and find things
to own and talk to.
My clock
is the only tune.
Nothing passes without time—
no days,
no wine.
Time gone, I fell upon
boring holes in the clock
and calling it chance,
keeping a month or two with me
like water in a boat, black
with every particular of home.
I observed the fanatics
who cry up death say
they will not pay for time,
like a road when we have
no money for ordinary dirt.
Building my house
a story higher, saving light,
I long to see time heal.
Where we keep time,
we are not ready.
Where we love, we exceed,
we eat…
I hear the first words die
with a strange turn
into thin ear.
The common years we were merry in
go cold—prayers
to be mulled.
Music: the first clock,
before time had discourse
with arms.
A bridge in the night.
Blessed pain, I lived in Axe Yard
disturbed by the river, an army without desires,
handsome but poor;
worn chapel of time, made this day.
and the deer came
on long legs between the trees
and clashed antlers with a sound
old and dry as the wind
gnats danced as if
summer had returned
for one day only
everything must go
through a gray mist that may
have been in my head
i measured the mountain
with my body pacing it out
i walked among birches
nothing but blank pages
overtook milkweed
giving birth to clouds
first let go of the obscurer wildflowers
the quadratic formula
the plots of novels
you’ll never read again
it gets easier the less
you cling to things
do you need to know for example
how to make fire
or small talk
or change
the stomach forgets milk
feet forget the ground
eventually one surrenders
time itself
to the blur of eternity
a cat sleeping in the sun
the stone is no home
for solemnity
the stone must be open
to time and ruin
approaching the ground
with no earhole
green and slow
like a ship of fools