Again, the rustling of a piece of toilet-paper
summons you back, bringing you pacing & fidgeting
down the long cell-blocks of cubicles,
trying the doors or pretending to be looking for a nickel
until suddenly, your few seconds up,
the automatic flushing system unleashes,
discharging you back into your drowning.
Hart,
stay back there & forget me-- forget
this system their pumping refills, this stillness
already being baited with fresh rustlings.
Everyone's got
a ring around
the fourth finger
of
the left hand
I move to you
With my empty finger
And together we fill the earth
Our floor is bedrock
Our roof the volcanic sky all red
and molten
A ring around
A ring around
your belly
I make it with my arms
We make it with our bodies
went & going noise
create a swell in ground
audible
in walls surround us
mapping of words
heard thru water thru
sound
sounded to a state of going
: fish in water
presage movement a
passage
hole cut in wood
that fish in
birch shd look happy
that looking shd be seeing
as a fish is being
from the sunsets
to the rubbish on the Harbor bottom
fermenting so bubbles
of the gas formed from the putrefaction
keep coming up and you watch them break
on the surface and imagine the odor
which is true
at low-tide that you can't stand the smell
if you live with the Harbor Cove or the Inner
Harbor to your side
the father's face comes broken at the face of the water
face to face they flow to the valley
water and father
Floodtide sinks the sandbar.
Only waves faltering out of rhythm
show where it was.
Currents gnaw debris free from banks
for burial in the black mud of the marsh.
Idling in the pentacle of an old army tent
I would have the green heat speak
of why it flows so close under the earth,
making my shadow blur.
But the wind rising is enough, all afternoon
it has me
thinking what a wind thinks
miles past land.
and now I'm overthinking things again
but no one cares to stop me
from falling back into the deep end
and now
no matter how many times
I take a shower
I scrub my hands
I will never feel clean again
the leaves,
tipped in amber,
outlined in soft glow,
dark veins set deep in luminosity,
as if forming a net,
capturing the setting sun.
a single droplet of water collects.
its weight, threatening but merciful,
caught between the boundary
of freedom and entrapment
as it stays suspended in time,
never easing,
never to leave.
if only i had the courage to bring it to my finger
and give it sweet, sweet release.
in the littered kitchen
rubbing dirty pots and hot
i think of swimming
still cold dark-green water
where I move somehow
(a poor swimmer)
then of that other
plunging rising
from the messy heat
of pots food talk without
leaving them -
meditation
but how do that
rising plunging while
scrubbing hot
how love my pots my
the only part i loved were the
rippling circles of water and the words
that water wind wood air obey
one law
those ripples wondrous geometrical
perfect eddies circles in my sink
or at a stone's throw
swings clocks seesaws all
that same motion lawful
birds' lever wings
core-petal flower circles
a cut trunk or time: the seasons
coming going returning
or moisture making rain which
moistens then more rain
or our sun-circling
I’ve tried the new moon tilted in the air
Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster
As you might try a jewel in your hair.
I’ve tried it fine with little breadth of lustre,
Alone, or in one ornament combining
With one first-water star almost as shining.
I put it shining anywhere I please.
By walking slowly on some evening later,
I’ve pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
And brought it over glossy water, greater,
And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.