Summer Seen (after Sean Hewitt)
running barefoot—shades pooling
between tree trunks—I avoid
almost by instinct moss-laired snails
and up-poking nettles and roots
to land as if to hopscotch
on white lichen splotches
swollen on noonlight; you
disappear ahead in sunglare
my hands fending off
the glints the gnats the webs
you have somehow snuck around;
this soil stretch undulates in your wake
while my feet falter on trackless terrain;
if only this here heart could think
could consider your fleeing being
perhaps it too would pause its beat
Heart of the Spool
[9]
wooden floors shy away from me: too many brooms beating to a needy rhythm
a maple leaf will fall at the same speed as a beech leaf
mother’s discarded yarn trimmings stickstatic to my body as I leave her room pause
like a canary carrying death to a window father brought his to the Home
gravestones in winter’s arms bat away my memories of any such snugglings
such desperate conclusions come of the dark period
birds eat one seed by one seed so digestion can prevent a coagulation of a whole bursting out
so what will we name the pastime of eating the little objects my parents left behind
even the garden gnomes cannot protect their verdant domain least to say their own geometry period
[11]
each bone achieves balance singularly & will not admit to conspiracy
these feelings try to move me out as I try to close in
mother’s marble floors are all smoothness so it is easy to forget the grit around life’s edges pause
loneliness remains an accumulative force for one-night stands (where I wait by a phone)
tear to tear meaning to measure each day’s disruption of night’s congealed darkness
once more I untangle mom’s jewelry in place of detecting hindsight’s signage pause
I have yet to shed my old skin now that both father & mother have left me
which slivered string will tumble trouble down as an abacus-bead being counted
stripped of its belongings mother’s bedroom is all the more full period
[15]
threads splitting away unravel my legs so I may step outside once again
exploring the woods behind our home I have yet to find some hollow to excavate & crawl into
the invisible too has its names belonging to whispers to prayers pause
I was not there when papa started to stammer-huff-stammer without a moon to escape through
never have I envied a fly on the wall that deathful new-moon night
you could cover the ceiling in any type of blue yet it still wouldn’t be sky pause
I have taken note of the engravings on cemetery stones measuring the fade against father’s
the more you handle a coin the less valuable it becomes till all you have is a faceless tailless ghost
tracing the limit of each letter or number I find is a poor substitute period
A Boy Named Tototl (Sparrow) Slain by Friar Bernardino de Sahagun’s Guard
So, the boy couldn’t read,
and when given that boulder-big tome
he tossed it to the earth
as any stone-heavy object without purpose.
So, they struck him down as useless
tossing his body in some ditch of earth.
However, every death
isn’t as mater-of-fact
beneath the marching sun,
below birds, utterly unknowing,
who spy such scenes acted out
spinning their temporary dark wreath.
If only all our brains,
so filled with faulty feathering,
were so easily cleared away
with a short sharp shock.
Then it wouldn’t matter
that all wings flap a bit differently.