Sub Rosa
1
(Not the light that tethers towards) (a melting
fortunate, thanks due) (the undertow, or gone
thick around the edges) (to the smudge,
the ghosts that hang about) (whose rule
I’ve learnt) (limp and worn through) (not that,
but the footprint) (all so left behind, so tremorous
2
The damage on, the southern light
clambered bells to ring. And waning,
tumbled the lake and its trenchancy
and left without decision. Pages
of novels littered the streets like salt.
Some smoke, figured like damask,
began to rise as the lamps, just lit,
staved it all away. And all the shutters
opened, at last, the sundry houses
drawing the breath and the evening.
3
it’s to be unheld) (to the ground) (The only
sound—among the clouds’ pallid echo
and the whirring traffic—the crunch of sand
and ice) (could it be that I am yoked to you?)
4
Wheel: the ties among the places we inhabit
Chapter: like so much salt dissolved into the slush
Erasure: the lake with ice flown to the east
Discrepancy: the ties among the places we inhabit
License: lengthened days: the face placed to the eye
Coriander: the world sprung forth
Analepsis: you step off the train: ablaze: you hold your tongue
Vex: to work against; a faltered hinge
Trowel: meditation
5
THIS WILL BE OUR LAST MESSAGE.
(A trick as old as) (what can happen
in the space) (as though to fall away) (the lake
white, and the ground, and the sky white
glowing as though the sun) (the name
you have given to the past) (my slanted
walls, the windows kicked out) (the loss
of sight: full of stones) (is my last obsession)
(December’s gentle grace, April’s looming gray)
The Silent Days
1
Hunt and peck, hunt and peck the air here
Would that I were a river or a man of fewer words than this
Go to the fields they smell of bergamot and the mud
cold and ankle-deep
Beyond all this, there is a wall beyond which the dark
Watch the day smoke from the heather
Let the wall stand until I cannot climb
2
The tea-kettle boils the crow in the neighbor’s yard
another brushstroke, another turn
Sky veers yellow first petal falling from the magnolia tree
3
What wind there was whipped my hair and face
I waited out the hours in the dark I waited underneath
We hope for ourselves, for the grasses and the trees
Follow this to the west
Have you tasted it, this ash that fills the air the thrush
Still life on a table: a book, my glasses, my watch, upended
4
These days, it’s all splayed out for us looped and relooped
5
Lawn swarmed with leaves; their dry crunch underfoot
Scrim of cloud sky’s mask, counterfeiter that he is
A mighty Fortress is our God, a Bulwark never failing
Untangle uncover the undone and still-alive and waiting
What words do you use what syntax, what fix
What yes what x
Triptych
1 | Landscape
Some puddles slack in the street
after a rain, after swaying almost
breaking in the wind the tree
not much more than twigs
growing from a spindle-trunk
and barren, buds aching and
gasping for light, days longer
but clotted, no song, the wind & the rain
2 | Landscape
Was it correspondence they found
unbequested in a dresser drawer,
antic script traced or amazed
on leaflets tattered at the edge?
Was the account amenable to the facts,
drawn upon and justified, legible
and summed, faithful to the letter?
Was it a map or a drawing of a map?
3 | Landscape
The region in which the tongue, pressed
to the teeth, is stilled and ready
to receive. The region in which
it is not what it is. We have not
ventured to sit beneath this tree
or that. Such branches, wrought
in arthritic clutch, black themselves
against the blackest night-tide hush.