No Potential For Grace

An ache in the left shoulder, numbness radiating down the whole right arm, and all before the sun rose through rainy clouds. So little was held in reserve as always. And when the arrow couldn't be found after, well . . .

He felt the process of pixilation as it happened, his smile literally grafted away from his face, until nothing was left but thin trails of smoke. A longing for tropical fruit whose moral components could no longer be avoided. And sadness - whenever he wrote about anger a whisper somewhere suggested instead he try sadness.

He felt his way from abundance. An ice storm, litter, a long painful flight. They were better questions than the answers indicated.

I looked North, as always on these mornings when the coffee refused or wasn't blessed and so my "spirits" simply bumped along, bruisey and roughened. She moved on to spiders, a redirect of some kind that confused me. A barn wall adorned with antiques indicating what now.

Forward friends, the deluge awaits us all. Her brief note brimmed with similar sadness but curiously deviated from the well of expectation. Must I sleep on the fulcrum again, the blanket stapled to my chin?

Nobody wears green eyeshadow to department stores anymore. Finding the right guy - who says I didn't? He wrote, he allowed himself that the one act of generosity.

I felt you all over my body with no potential for grace. A familiar dream blurred by chalk, embers, embarrassing references to love.

A Sign You're Out There

While napping, I heard voices two lawns over, discussing what sounded like a pending crucifixion. I knew a man whose voice sounded like a fan belt going.

The mist muted distant trees, their lovely foliage, the only effect worth mentioning. Love and pride commingled in that moment with tears which as always were gone as soon as they appeared.

I keep waiting for some sign you're out there, listening, but it never comes. I did notice walking yesterday that the fields beyond the river are officially forest.

That mist, wraith-like, the first time we tried getting high. When cars passed I stepped far up the bank as if death were right there watching.

The twenty sentences struggle later in the day. All day I wrote and now my right arm feels shorter than my left.

The best thing about having student is how much they teach you. Sleep is as always a refuge.

"I long for something - something that I don't have." The pumpkins, for example, which steadfastly refuse orange.

My childhood was defined in part by the presence of pheasants. Adulthood by turkeys, possibly bears.

I await word and it never comes. Repetition is harder than it looks.

The tree that holds us all up is hidden in a glade. Like a loved one's prayer I coasted through the day.

Only Longing

The umbrella reminded him of turtles, condoms, walking sticks, and certain letters of the alphabet. One stone fell into one shoe. She apologized to the executioner who leered, brandished a pair of shiny silver scissors.

The city was fake, invented as a dream, and when he reached out for it he was revealed that way, as one capable only of longing. The sheep came down from the hillside, bringing with them rain. The umbrella was broken but he couldn't part with it because it reminded him of an old photograph of his grandfather.

That was how it went in those days, three bills for dinner, then a long slow walk by the lake while the sun set. Your profile haunts me the way an injured crow might and not a single poem passes without some day set aside in it for you. He wrote, he made shit up, he put it all out there for anyone to read.

The last of the summer turtles slipped off its warm stone into the pond's murk and the echoes of it passing stayed in the air longer than one might expect. The ruins of old cars, a tractor, broken glass, shotgun shells - markers, all. The walk was long and on it God forgave him, lifted him up. made the brown trail and gray rain lovely for a moment.

One day and the mail arrived! He wrote that words alone could save him and this was something you understood, however you had resisted it some twenty years earlier. I did not forget the rose but only lacked courage to bear it forward in the face of your family's class-based disdain.

So at last the twenty sentences don a pale pink ceramic mask with painted tears below either eye. The circus was only half-set up before the mayor came down and said zoning laws prohibited its operation. The workers wrapped up in their musty blankets touched each other in the dark, they were the only ones who could say they were unafraid of sorrow.

We pulled the sleeping bag tighter which was an admission, and somehow also a letting go. The words falling away in the dark like drops of rain go unimpeded.

What Do You Hold Back

Was it a brown sweater with holes? Was it one candle or two and were they - was it - scented? What poem did I write with all that empty space so privileged?

Was it a leap? Was it a fall? Was it a dance of some kind, a sad folk dance perhaps, one that invoked death, that drew forth the Goddess's ceramic mask?

Was it snowing or raining? Was it cold or so cold? In what phase was the moon?

Where was Dan in those early days? Had either of us yet read about the Salem witch trials? What was Albany but where my father went to return so tired?

Did I piss on the other side of a guard rail? Did I deliberately forget the rose under the dashboard? What was it about walking that we went so many miles so happy?

Did you become a teacher or an antique dealer or both? Do you ever think now of Lake Champlain? Asked about art, what do you hold back from your answer?

Is there such an event as the last time forever? I dream about you a dozen times a year, nearly always linked to the new moon's elide.

Groundlessness

What you cannot say in words you must put in visual terms. This is a happy family. You are supposed to be grateful.

Run and try to catch one another. This has to do with pivoting on an axis. If you want to kill your rival in the eyes of a woman.

A realization of any kind. Zealousness is the enemy of meditation. All women become weavers.

Something that is not visible. A danger of groundlessness. Mystery is more interesting.

The serenity of the landscape above the water. Color is a blessing. Very fragile on its legs.

Tools of torture, mostly cutting. Made with pleasure. She gets shot at.

A solution of continuity. During the night I count the hours.

Pleasant Thrum

One child understands space, the other time. Where the marigold was last seen waltzing. Winter runoff exposed blue glass, gleaming detritus from a decades-old dump.

Red mud, white scat. A square of sunlight mistaken for papyrus, even these days. Low brook, pleasant thrum.

They come hard or not at all which - I can this now - isn't true. Three acres alongside a high wire. He turned off the engine to give me directions and I was greatly impressed at how gracefully he pronounced the name of several Hindu gods and goddesses.

How did she feel, the actress, kissing him there on the boat? They watched stars fall with others at the airstrip, though nobody said a word to anybody else. I'm back, ready for bed.

"Why do you always have to do your twenty sentences?" One of the dogs slept out all night which made him friskier than usual come morning. The tent drying on the dining room table made both of them laugh.

No going back, no "tweaking." One of the students reminded him of Scott Baio, another of Luke Perry. That's not music, it's a fan belt going.

Archers on horseback, that's what I want you to dream about. Or Randy Rhoads, whichever comes first.

Not Curative

Calliope music where the horizon blurs. Letters read in trees inflame the heart. A red feather no doubt signifies a dead fallen cardinal.

Or else, where the last of the 'mums gathered dust. A dip in the earth you could call a valley. Sipping wine beneath clustered stars, blossoming frost.

Fear spreads like butter in summer. Bicycles, canoes, roller skates, trucks. See where the fragments conspired to become a list?

A folded cloth in the center of which was blood. The toothmarks of rodents on bones found in a glade. Pink quartz resembles liver in sunlight near the bathroom window.

Leaves just fly off the calendar, they do. There was a missing arrow, there was a threat of additional mail. Dancing despite his death, thank you, twenty years ago in a defective Piper.

The options include milk and not choosing. Rope was used in place of the traditional leather belt. His serenity was skin deep, you could pop it with a pin.

Learned powerlessness. Where knowledge itself is not curative.

Lady Macbeth'd

The holy black spot. G force affixed to the broken larynx.

Gorging on the history of deprivation. Bales of anger sinking in the ragged sea.

You foresaw all of this and penned a blank check to me anyway. The linoleum whispered its own vague promise.

Bears in the distance chuckle as the gibbous moon rises without strings. Shooting up in the old days is no longer an option.

Cheap beer, cheaper cheese. She failed to open her arms which given the magnitude of his headache didn't really mean anything.

Amount to what he wrote. Searching medical dictionaries for likely phrases.

"This land is my land, it isn't your land." The llama would never make it in Greece where men bear their insults differently.

Old card games and then some. Repetition is also a way of making a point.

Hence, the holy black spot. A gored matador in love with oxen.

He wrote in search of the Sisyphean grace. Also the holy black spot which so plagued him it Lady Macbeth'd him.

Collusion Against The Whole

Between two full stops like a black desert train. A butte, a plateau, a field of wiry cactus - all this comprised distance. Was it only yesterday that we wrote about the motivational properties of steam?

Syrup in glass bottles rattle at a sudden passing roar. They turned their faces into musty pillow in order to muffle a spate of loud moans. After, he slept facing North which was comforting as always.

The apples "busted out" of the orchard. A moose picked slowly over the sweetened deadfall, an ache in his left rear thigh. The poem began to gather momentum where the phrase "anterior ligament" entered into it.

He modeled his approach to poetics after a favorite porn actor whose death had grieved him. Held loosely as a fist might a beloved pen. When the fluttering of leaves was considered sufficient and incendiary.

Halloween as sport, also an occasion for snowflakes to make an appearance. He struggled with the idea that sculpture was an event in time, seeing it instead as an object that was obligated to bear the passing of moment after moment. Theory, he wrote, was never my strong point.

An old dog in the still-dark dawn mistaken for a lumbering bear. Dreams of fruit juice offered up by an old teacher. He considered his belly a harbinger, hence all the poems having to do with hunger and fear.

What do you have against a heap of fragments? So many pieces in collusion against the whole.

This Nadir Here

Orangutans tickled the ivory. Split level cake, piles of whipped cream. Over coffee, beers, tall glasses of water.

Slumbering fundamentalists faced with Emily Dickinson. She stepped back to breathe and the world followed a model of obedience. You can read this sentence any way you want.

A phenomenon that ended after diligent head colds. The true nature of crisis arrives over breakfast. Sunlight filtered through the last of the tomato plants, was deeply reminiscent.

We were borrowers awaiting a dream. A story line that promised fame and fortune yet otherwise remained elusive. Darts, dog barf, doughnuts.

And sterling silver in unopened drawers. An oval begets a mouse. When it came to geography vs. landscape he didn't hesitate to take sides.

Over-cooked steak. A wine bottle rolled back and forth over the kitchen floor making those who watched think of the sea. Let us now bid farewell to the primacy of the word.

A letter arrives, awash with sweet steam. This nadir here, not the other.

The Other Side Of A Low Hill

Irish Setter pointing from the rowboat's bow. The target was a stand of goldenrod, behind which a dozen chickens dozed in the sun. A whistling sound from the other side of a low hill.

On a sleeve of black velvet, twenty two rubies were sewn into the shape of a rose, drawing multiple oohs and aahs from the assembled. Progeny as bargaining chips, pageantry. A plethora of doughnuts that recalled a favorite aunt.

Not this, no, but then not any other either. Around the time the Berlin wall fell. One couldn't believe what any politician said, though the desire to do so was constantly at risk of overwhelming one.

Meaning was a matter of accretion, slowly over time. Were they poems or something else, he never felt the need to take up the argument. At the benefit for community theatre players, his wife was haunted by the sounds of guitar strings snapping.

The bombed ruins of the castle. The opportunity to partake of new technologies. It was poetry because nobody said that it wasn't, was that it?

He wrote, belching. The tow truck demolished the newspaper tube, which he proceeded to right at dusk. The moon hung in the afternoon sky, pale as a chalky mollusk.

You read me in the many ways you do. A cold night, a child's prayer, a glass of expensive wine.

Blistering

Spawn a musical family. Never took to actual guitar lessons. A bit of a loner.

At that moment what he wanted in life. A new realm in which to play. The sternest of warnings.

Marred by the antics of headliners. Came disco and the painted faces. Burdened by simple.

Beloved runs through the hills. With his clothes torn and his body pummeled. A certain desperation lying just beneath the surface.

Harmonic exercises. He simply blossomed. Reeled off a blistering solo.

The insecurity of a true perfectionist. Always look back on and cherish. Poured his heart and soul.

A disaster in the making. Was identified by his jewelry.

Tenacity But In What Measure

Raisins soaked overnight in water expand to like pillows. Flickering lamplight informed the story in what we might call a historically accurate way. While overhead apple limbs brushed the shingles, a thumping sound like English ghosts.

He wrote in the morning and walked a gray valley in the afternoon. Destiny and tenacity but in what measure. He believed himself to be younger than his years but was fatigued the way one can only be in their fifth decade.

The squealing of pigs, the sweet rot of compost. Rain fell confounding faint radio signals. The sunflowers required a saw to come down.

Hemlines rose and saxophones increased in price. Executives went sailing by the window holding their lapels and blowing raspberries. Dust billowed where the journey was well underway.

He resembled the devil at his handsomest. People left the poetry reading angry because of how certain words were employed. Earl Gray tea a mere memory where the front lines rumbled mustardly.

With what shall we supplement our favor. Thousands of colored dice floated over the bedspread while we slept dreaming. Stars, billiards, pinpricks, etc.

Was a welter in which one could be forgiven. Or felt - maybe better to put it that way.

Lipstick And All

It was morning, he could tell by how how the buck scrapes glistened. She began each cup of coffee with a little prayer and sweetener. The process was such that any effort to make a story out of or because of it was bound to fail.

The way the shovel leaned it was almost as if it supported the entire west side of the house. Nerves, he explained, or meant to, but nobody was really listening. After they left, the driveway reeked of grease and oil, an oddly comforting smell.

Bright yellow is a type of candy at that type of party. Where castrating bulls all morning made for a bitter kind of later dreaming. The tallest headstone closest to the road is the one you'll want to remember.

Walking on eggshells right into the drama. It's fake, she wrote, but tellingly funny nonetheless. All road signs are indicative of local cultural malaise.

The name's familiar but no I'd have to say I don't think so. Seven shades of lipstick and all in the shape of bullets. Frost on the apple, pumpkins on the vine.

They looked the other way but in concert. This bleeding heart of mine, I'm gonna let it ride. A stack of books that somehow doubled as the lost map of the interior.

You figure into me a complicated way. The grimly bewildered always play another hand.

With Radiating Doubt

I held the fort, somewhat poorly as it turned out. While visiting a nearby farm and his psyche. There is play and there is what play prepares us for.

In terms of burgeoning experience then. Two scrambled eggs and half a banana. Lovely, that forced stillness, God saying slow.

In the old rocker before grabbing Nabokov. Rising grain prices, walking devil blues. He navigates the terrain with courage and a cane.

Sighted another old foundation out there, etc. Like wastelands to me, some shelves empty, faces looking down. Shuttered, that word works.

Somewhat contrary to the idea we have, right or wrong. Ghosts very much on my mind these days. I do, yes, but with radiating doubt.

For me, just rolling in the lovely notes, awash with whatever passion he held while composing. Thus more informed or undergirded. I'm just saying is all.

It was the whole point. While going away I'm so sad.

Familiar But Not Welcome

Days when the map is folded, days when it blows in the breeze. Planetary assumptions breed decadence. My right arm shortened involuntarily.

Consider again a drive by a field full of pumpkins. The first of the leaves to turn almost always does so secretly. Of course bears dream, wouldn't you?

Sentenced by the sentence but to what end? A coarse meal as if of bone. Spades in a line all dripping with rain.

I see you and some part of me moves towards naming. Umbrellas again, as if I haven't been photographed enough on rainy side streets. A kiss in church begets jealousy, also tea.

He drove all night just to see that old bookstore again. Several hours in the psych ward resulted in torn shirts and vague commitments to marriage. Anger is familiar but not welcome which may be part of the problem.

Harbored illness, weaponed-up seals. The newsletter came like the mail without surprise. Chickadees remind me of in winter when I long the most for spring.

Breath a door that opens out. You my love were the first to see me so liquescent.

Reluctant Yearnings Again Identified

A noose through which the other side beckoned. Laplanders aglow. The canal entrance roughened by whitecaps.

On the barn floor, day old entrails. Pullets where the grasses floundered following a rain. A red light, a cool breeze, a garage band doing what resembled a Rolling Stones song.

Dogs asleep on the front porch as the sun falls. Train whistles brought us abruptly to a halt, exactly the way a ghost might. Apple season, deadfall, reluctant yearnings again identified thus.

They pressed dry sage into the pasta dough, shared a glass of zinfandel. At first the picture reminded me of scattered toys but then I realized the hurricane's thumbprint. An abundance of detail buttressing obsession.

Jeans on the line grew stiff as the temperatures dropped. Once again, we find ourselves in the market for a tea kettle. One imagines a retired dancer walking quietly down the road in Autumn, his mind filled with unsubtle leapings.

What flow surrounds you and with what blue of course. The letter commended a continuing study of economics which all night caused him to slip deeper into a familiar depression. The cultural and emotional skeins that any broken promise leaves in its wake.

And again as always the couplet obligates me to consider you directly. The preceding sentences amend you precisely and leave me mapless, heart askew, so desperate now to alter our term.

A Sudden Profluence

What's with you and these older men? A moose is not a deer and vice-versa. One asks - or should - what happened to the lovely bottles of wine she purchased?

Or about the perils associated with recidivism. The poet who blabbed about politics wound up with sand in his shoes. A hint of apple, a trace of pear, and teency bits of cork between our teeth.

The jagged collage of dreams suggest - to me they suggest - a collaborative process. But again, please, just say what you want to say. The fight went on for hours, sometimes silently, and left them both more tired than usual.

The rain didn't help, unless you were a sunflower. All at once then, twenty sentences. And a sudden profluence of blue jays, those spiteful ignorant birds.

He talked about submarines and smoking a pipe someday as if. The future resembles a compendium, its pages rapidly turning. Is it me or is that sound we hear the dry rustle of time running thither?

The traditional combination of factors. June was a purple month with most of us in it. The currency of sleep.

"Are you out there/Can you hear this?" He wrote recalling the time he passed a highway sign for Memphis, the last drive in which you had not burnt a passage on my brain.

This Perennial Presence

This crossbow looks sturdy and easy to aim. Roasted kale with sea salt, in an ochre-colored bowl. Torrential emotion where the radio brays.

The landscape was a bevel upon which . . . The temperature dropped, much to a young trout's pleasure. Oh narrative, what you do to me!

The tangerines had attitude, it was what made them so attractive. Yet Chopin was not the man we had imagined him to be. The pink bucket left out in the rain grew pale as the flesh of an apple.

You you you. Military music, its brash thumping, suggested the party was in full swing. We gazed the sky, the clouds were all gauze.

For a long time after there was only silence. I dreamed of her grave surrounded by handmade signs. He is here then, still.

Or else he wrote. You would not prefer breakfast before you set out? The winter fields were the color of bombast and appeared to go on forever.

At the end of a life there is this perennial presence, a salve. A matter of love, of fuel, of your big and graceful heart.

Our Own Reflections

It weighs heavy, that objective. Not as a pile of books would but maybe raw apples. We saw ourselves reflected in the black windows of shut-down department stores.

Holiday dioramas with moving parts, also tanks on the side streets. As the sun fell a gourd rattled. The deer straightened, stood, their shoulders flexed.

In the distance, blue hills, the "sweet bye and bye." Boston rouge, a celibate battlements. The cost, too, in terms of what flowed off the tongue, had to be considered, but was it.

But that's a city I'll probably never visit. "John fell down the stairs and died." I could make a career busting prostitutes, his brother bragged, but then I'd never get any sleep.

No number is recoverable following the horizon. The water was covered with a thin green scum no finger dared stir. Popcorn then, two bowls, buttered with a light sprinkling after of Parmesan cheese.

Might you have been dreaming of tomatoes? The roil emerged from shadows like plans for a new hydroelectric plant. A fist, a first, and a flat foray.

The beast with its hunger lurching through childhood. You asked in the shadows - I was there, in your arms - what are you waiting for?

A Thistle, The Moon

Imagine opposite the church. Or Richard Hugo chasing dogs through the rainy hollow. Sickle in the sky pointing down.

Coin in hand, simple umber. What better way to preempt the dead than through prayer. My dreams all funneled through a head cold.

An old geezer in bike gear. Worries about global stability give rise to folk songs. What I've never heard raised hackles.

The numbers "didn't add up." Two for flinching! And fairness, too, somehow figures in.

A black field in which pale ovals hovered, eventually held to be faces. Memory wrapped in a quilt. Whosoever amongst you shall plant camellias . . .

He wrote, gleefully, surprised. The hatchet appeared to be singing at the base of the tree. Strategy was the plan, it always was.

"How it changed to soft rust underneath." The down of a thistle, the moon on your thighs.

Question Devotion

A friend's voice in the darkness, coming from across the road, caused sudden and inexplicable sadness. In the forest, the thump of falling acorns, a shear of sunlight. Pressed in wet soil then, a print.

A way out, or in, as if stasis were not its own generative force. I accept certain directives, notably those relating to reading, while others I ignore. The old homestead was draped in Christmas lights, most of which blinkered in the dusk.

One way to think of you is as a cloud. Just how many books are you going to read they asked, which was the wrong question. Devotion left me cold.

Lines in the collected - and ever present thereafter - river stones reflect a desire for complex narrative. Or striation, a theory of. He wrote, as always.

The front path, the first kiss. Repetition is best when it sneaks up on you, when it catches you, unaware. The blue dish was incapable of holding so many dice.

Yet as the hours passed there was inescapably a calm behind which panic was about. Halfway there a rooster greeted us. Plastic masquerading as wicker.

But as always in the final sentences it comes down to what I want to say. Which is an Albany thing, a breaking kind of thing.

A Feature Of The Terrain

Unload what burden. The desert grew a fluid apparition as if the heat itself longed for water. This was before anyone actually read the story. Bad days ahead so consider it a gift.

He wrote, criminally. A way the bloodstream has of bearing its redness forward gratefully. His eyes put her in the mind of winter logging. Each breath was a ragged cloak and no light emerged from their shoulders.

Yet the wound was worth falling for, as most are. The shape of the chin anticipates appetite. The preference a book has for being taller than wider. Yes, please, do sheathe that broadsword.

Pine trees were profligate, a feature of the terrain. Buried at sea was a fantasy, a way of tempting oneself to sleep. At night, the stars flickered like a television finding itself. Talk about the soul excited them and so many hours passed in celebration of opacity.

Keep your monologue to yourself. Once dropped the hammer floated which made everyone reconsider physics as a graduation requirement. She stepped out from shadows and sniffed the air, a model of caution. The weather had it in for us, wouldn't you agree?

The Biggest Secret Of All

A ring is a circular metal band. Villains begin to consider legendary figures. Golden yellow topaz.

The right to vote becomes a class-based privilege. Their bloodline carries the divine right to rule. Sometimes a door is special.

Identify familiar odors. She feels a sudden vertigo. Potions are also sometimes called elixirs.

Poor and unequipped. The law of supply and demand can drastically affect the value of any currency. Verisimilitude is important because it allows.

Certain things are the way they are. The best way to write shaded text. This is merely a strong breeze.

Collapsing tunnels are extremely dangerous. Why use traps? Sometimes a door is special.

Let's start with the biggest secret of all. Dust storm effects.

The Sight Of You

Cary Grant absent-mindedly patted Rin Tin Tin. Picking at a loose thread where the cashmere had aged prematurely. The color of avocado, gazpacho, and gasoline rainbows. He fired the shotgun out the window a little after midnight as a way of discouraging revelers.

The pool was kidney-shaped and his wife laughed. A see-through lie is worse than iron-clad as are most prisons. There was a white cloud, an onyx fist, and a silver sword that pointed North. Sophistry more or less a matter of balance.

It's the weave more than the appropriation if you can believe it. The audience twittered behind white gloves and ornate hand fans, which left the magician not furious so much as sad, recalling how his father had more or less predicted this. The holes were deep and their clay-colored walls wept. Some repetition was valuable, or interesting, but what repetition exactly.

'Twas a hurricane was what it was. Mostly feral dogs, their voices rises and falling where the canyon narrowed to a point. Wintergreen, tobacco, boiled ham, nickels. A candle with molotovian aspirations.

The lilac grew taller than the house. A few last daisies like coelacanths on the causeway. Old Scratch was there but he sank back down at the sight of you. What was it that worried me yesterday for I forget?

Ailments, Religion

Beginnings, endings.

Vaslav Nijinsky waited out the forties with his eye on a slant of light. Le Spectre de la Rose, over and over and over. The last breath, the brass monument, grace.

In 1932, a shower of gold coins. Lemonade on a green table, the green table, and still in the distance, mortar. Prayers were uttered, parasols folded. You could hear over the far hill the low rumble of whole armies in flight.

But before all that, Mary Wigman. Anna Pavlova in 1915, her eyes a remedy for ailments, religion. Charlotte Rudolph bent behind the shuttered lens and said now. While the doctor declined to meeting anyone's eyes.

The problems that dance created then, for them, that way. Fragments of betrayal seeded in admiration. Daguerreotypes, lithographs, the cabinet card. The relationship between human movement and photography.

Oh but Lydia Sokolova in 1915! Contes, Russia, where the smoke took forever to dissipate. We are across from the crematorium, that's what blocks the sun. Gone then, to the wings, that other place, shadowed.

Past Glacial Till Considering

Leapt or leaped. Wait until tonight. I was herbivorous so far as the Cenozoic. Lettuce will not wilt, arrive, or stage a secession.

Destiny is the cousin of ambivalence. Family rivalries best even cornfields. You bring water, I'll sing. They wandered past glacial till, considering even then holding hands.

A deer in the bracken, a Cuban cigar. That'd be Dwight E. Eisenhower. The letters arrived in a black pouch, each one ornate, and reeking of blue ink. Or so the many words implied.

So late, so tired. A stanza is just order, holding what at bay. He missed writing but. Yet four lines bleary-eyed was no feat at all.

And so then there was and believe me. A soft gold glitter. The body of a dead dog wrapped in a shower curtain. Water rises, we just follow.

Learning It Was Slow Going

The slow parliament of beginning. When at night crickets abound in the sawgrass. The moon of discourse, sifting logic. The dream settles, like rancid flour.

Or else. Or else what he wrote. He wrote "intentions" where he meant "attention," once anyway. He was learning it was slow going.

An airplane just visible after dusk through the backyard pines. Mistaken for a late season firefly which naturally led to thoughts of a world without them. Landscape an open hand, a floor on which dancers made absence. A flight, metaphor, concomitant implications.

To resist was to embrace or that was the proffered excuse. No one sentence could carry the piece yet that was how he approached them. I is not another - I is he. The chorus then rising from a low hum to acquiescence.

There were certain clues and a way the text unraveled when held to the light. Wait - don't say "light." Or else say what you will but carefully, carefully. He wrote not knowing what else the day would show.

A Low Hum, That Carol

Ambivalence as a trait, as destiny, as "the dream of having it all" made manifest. One who cannot choose has not - in not choosing I mean, contra Geddy Lee - made any choice at all. "We're all alright, we're all alright." Through repetition - overchampioned, though Stein remains a (mostly enigmatic but usefully so) influence - the word was drained of effect. It resembled (he wrote) a Christmas tree ornament. One made of plastic, with a little watch battery inside, so that the tiny plastic cradle spun with its plastic baby Jesus, a low hum, that carol.

But then when he wrote - listen - he was surrounded by books, projects, deadlines. He ran right up against all of them, gleeful, and more often than not successful. If nobody knew his name, well, that was called Christian humility, which was inherent in any joyfully embraced anonymity. He was fond of history, but fonder yet of good stories, like the one he read last night about dragons.

"Oh, wait," the prefect - the "family proctor" - said, from beneath the dusty brim of his tall black hat, eyes blazing like film on fire. And on those two syllables one's vanity hung precariously like an old shirt with every last hole unsewn. Dragons, the Hardy Boys - what did it all mean to a little sinner whose conviction by an Angry God was mitigated (was held in abeyance, like interest on a loan) only by fishing, long walks in the woods.

I have this need for a text but never the one I am writing. The wings I once used to intimidate lawyers when we faced off in court are mostly withered, crinkled like saran wrap. Randy Rhoads appears routinely in my dreams, four or five times a year, but I'm less moved by it.

And I want to obliterate this version of the twenty sentences - lacking all control -

Some devolution then - of what though, of what - occurred in these sentences and the risk was letting them be. What if you went deeper by censoring those glimpses less?

He wrote, wanting peace - any cloudiness at all, really - and instead, crows jabbered, imperfections, a sudden desire to gorge at breakfast.

Obvious Consequences

A lovely rooster scaled the compost pile and - so regal on the rot - set about crowing. Sun lay on the azaleas. The kids ate pancakes, fried eggs and sausage. You could hear a mandolin somewhere, its elevated rippling reminiscent of coupons.

The newspaper revealed our willingness. Fifteen years passed since they crossed the road and still nobody could forget. A story constructed of familiar tropes but penned on the back of a candy wrapper is what. He wrote "she wrote" and they both meant it.

Sometimes you have to "let go." The paddle floated away following his heart attack. A valentine aesthetic, a love song. Skimming stones was an early art acquired with some difficulty and he remained proud of the knack, never passing a chance to display it.

They drank Budweiser with their hash, then went out and killed four cows. The boy said aloud how the bloody skulls reminded him of transistors. There were obvious consequences though nobody bothered to elucidate them. Well, screen doors shouldn't slam and you couldn't spill a drop.

This was a way of seeing the landscape through a lens that was both historical and arcane. They wanted candy - salty chips even - anything to deflect a considered reflection. Though he reasoned at a young age that roads could be both a means of escape and return. On a fine morning with its autumn breeze, and the last of the tomatoes for breakfast.