RICKETTS GLEN POEM
*
—shelter
the sound of water
(& one lone tone of
birdcall: G#)
I push my lameness before me
I prod it with my staff
something beautiful is
happening
nearby
just inside a gun
poured
from effable to effable
would I enchant would I implore
the whistler behind me
the outdoor people
in their packs & plaid
flannels
the young couple
who stop for cigarettes
where the trails meet
I’m not sorry (for what)
breathableness
the little hollows, their
liquid
bells (that have no children)
(tho
cast above
(—a breathing
eye)
the dripping margin
styptic, I mean to the soul
(even the other bodies passing
withhold their deaths)
(—their
depths)
ATTENTION,
CONSIDER YOUR HEALTH!
(warning sign before descent)
not a dance
not a memory palace
(though well-placed)
spiral of woodgrain
in decay
the fastidiousness of water
its gaps &
frets
make of it an aisle, an apse
or —no
transeptal (but—to what?)
having lost the whistler
I have gained two
photographers from China
(I want to photograph them)
o small life
again I call to you—bury
me
to have dreams again
(—from the bowl of
dreams)
but what caption, (-soldier)
(mask)
make another (mask) / (mark)
minster
this greenwood conservatory
(a legible apse)
(its choreography of drips)
refine or splay
the hemlocks’ ledger-profile
(waiting now
for the child-bodies to pass
(—their smaller,
breathing bodies)
make overhung a verb:
overhunging,
overhung’d
cast back into a perfect
present
as far as punctuation goes
I prefer the hunters to the
whistler
their sharp reports
(behind me)
(before me)
I cross to where my student
stands
nod as I pass
(or is it a pilgrimage?
clockwise, counterclockwise,
—always before the mechanism
it remains difficult
not to say “God”
(tho
I am bereft)
my three-legged life varicose
my own G#, not so pure,
lame in its single shoulder
—you must not, I wanted to shout
(& then I
remembered Brigit
how her ghost
held my hand in her
hands
my one hand in both her hands)
TYPO 29
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