The eye’s never-ending question
of what is
form colors the coming sense

so autumn comes
a tale of ice
a lake hanging in the sky

The infant continues
to begin.

We speak the syllable
of two bodies
in their talk

within the habits of night air.

2

The phrase forms
four seasons.

Not as in
whirlings,
as if the self

skips. The low X
defines a landscape,

seeks sound
in grim parlance
of the western night.

This should be
tragedy’s pin-idleness.

3

Clocks rose below
the private poles of colonies
changing text,

clouds, the nameless corners
of a room,
windows sweeping the wind.

A subtler proof:
mockingbirds rolled their r’s.

Absent grappling of eyes,
of form
traverse shade.

4

The sea hued a gilt machine
in light diffusing.

Clouds of water, gongs
in darkened heaven,

the pied machine of ocean
made rainy leaves
blue. Frail figures

like blooms
became the sun.

The sea, bowing,
followed clouds.

Wind turning
then the sea.

5

Turned the rock of sleep:
the difficult tumbles

of the sailor’s eel
against this earth,

these caverns half-asleep,
and an undivided fire.

6

The rind of X:
the sun a jar
of ash. Ephemeras

swarm like the particular
jumble, how the bottle
has a hundred eyes

and yesterday’s tropic
of complications totals more
than planes that tilt the eye.

7

A cabin, a custom,
or an aging cloud.

The house is frost
and falls asleep.

Father leaps
from cloudless evening
and the choir.

Mother among children
clawing scenes and curtains:

a theatre of waves and solemn birds.

An arctic to imagine
through our leaving

a chilled chance dark,
a book on ether, an accordion,
a honeycomb.

This rendezvous of limbs
putting on their shadow’s

truest part. A ball,
a bar, a blaze of summer.

Tea on trays, torches en fuego on the patio, women, faint outlines on the wall. Night nigh and one-by-one the stars, the itchy rasp of crickets in the grass. With each sip, three lines on his forehead, thoughts: Oh, the pleasantries of peasants, bare tree-tops in the fall. Everyone a stranger. The last goose a serif on the V’s very top.

Picaresque Variations

I lived with an artist who painted tambourines for a living. My job was to mix his colors for him and the life was very hard. I lived with an artist for his colors. The life was a living. My job was to mix who painted the tambourines. I lived the life my job was living hard, his painted colors mix tambourines for an artist. I lived the mix of artist living colors with hard life tambourines. My hard job was his for him. I mix my life and his very living. I lived tambourines for him, artist painted colors. And when I saw myself so well dressed, I told my boss to take his donkey; I didn’t want to work there anymore.

Animal Husbandry

The cows’ hindquarters were mythological quotations. Men lined up in rows, ready for afternoons to overtake them. All of this was then; they’ve yet to see what the present holds: the cow with calf or the one slowly dying? A frayed rope draws the bucket from below. The fence posts, roosts for tiny swallows.

Some Notes on the Preceding

The artist above is a starving perfectionist and whispers to himself.

In those times, time was kept by counting one’s own pulse, distance by the width of one’s two fingers squeezing the sun.

The story’s neglect of a minor character left her to mope the margins.

They called dreams forecasts; imagination, memory; ate the bird’s whole body but they threw away the heart.

•

In the song that keeps the boulder
from the cliff-edge; in the past and perfect
tense; in the color that would seize
the searching eye and tell it of his whereabouts; and in
that quick breath, the quarter-note before it starts…
In all movement, the seed of violence,
the slow oak’s improbable care:
in the gasp that rattles the catches of the gate;
in the side-yard of the plot;
in the updraft and downbeat of the storm.
The flex that shutters at the picture, that turns.

•

The picture on the wall was a picture of the ocean,
a chip in the glass, storm lumbering in.
He took the ocean down,
wrapped it in a towel. He laid it in a box
and thought about sand;
how the ocean meets its end
spinning in the shallows. Sand, saltwater.
His fever spiked. He wrapped a towel around his neck.
All night, pulled by the moon.

•

Moon in the clouds; red in the leaves; a fever;
tear in the vessel; gap in the song
–to rest; breath in the silence …
Heat to the song; rhythm to the color;
gap in the leaves. In the song, a breath.
Red in the silence; gap in the vessel.
Fever in the breath.

•

The fever of the storm of the season catches in his skin.
Mercury creeps beneath his tongue.
Fishermen squint for birds, steer boats to where birds feed.
Names click like slides through a projector.
Milkweed, Wellfleet, Joseph Lister.
It’s a long list of ills. Print legibly.
Count backwards from ten.

•

Number, number, number, number, in, out, in . . .
The plate his name is etched on stares from the corner,
a thunderbolt marks its place in his attention.
The elements glare, going impossibly nowhere:
ink, imprint, clamshell, lead. They, unlike the minutes
are indelible–A hiss, black wash.
Atmosphere, altitude, blink, blink . . .

•

And up is where it begins, and down here is the rain,
chiseled shards shed from the material, mist remnants.
An eye moves in on him,
faceless sweat chills him in the sheets.
Its grasp dampens the hour. Pink blisters
bubble on his neck.
The stereo flower drops its lace. New earth, first snow
before frost dusts the bed that lines the plot.
Fever sweetens its bow.

•

Pedal tone: the steel-wound strings of winter’s earthy bass
done-over. It goes a minor second, then a perfect fourth?
Goes 8:35 and freezing rain? So many winters
and the cold shocks still.
Goes this and worse from now on?