MOMENTARIES
1.
The farther we go the plan of the landscape
The silk lilacs all grow small and change color
On purpose Art, even poetry are practices
Of diminished returns The No. 2 pencil
Gets smaller already small brushes loose
Hairs and by the time I saw Bowie at
The Tower Theater in Philadelphia
He was a child’s thumb I could smear
Him put out those giant stage lights
With my hand touch the spires of his
Dead city not a single splinter
Would snap off
2.
Needles deep in my bedroom will me
Rain or clear even with the windows
Covered a silver line says hot and
However far that is from normal right now
I am explaining to myself the solace,
The comfort of these signs as I hold
My sharp fingers to my thin wrist and
Counting my heart is doing a most
Essential addition every stair assures
Me there are still ways to go
3.
Northern mockingbirds a pair
Who thought they could sing with every
Songvoice and value-added chasten
This morning unmusically and must day
Baby, let’s fly down and eat some
Blood-blcak berries of the cut bushes
And shit them on the Toyota hybrid
I think that they say that I’m sure of it
Because that IS what they do
4.
So many summers have borrowed my water
(How many?) Winter my breaths in tiny snakes
So that death accumulates in the total of
Momentaries some birds drink and are attached
It seems by something in the water after
A struggle they escape but return again
To that risk that draws together the birdbath
Mesopotamia and the Plain of Ossuaries
5.
What is outside of this house is trying so hard
To enter through the windows to fill up space
With itself as it has the compost now a single
Network you could lift as a single shape more
Roots more branches more rhizomes more
Shadows the throwaway parts of trees out
And inside an inch different you almost can’t
Know them apart as one gives way to another
But the window sweats at danger as I reach
Down and plant the dogwood in the rabbit hole
I see roots have already entered the backs
Of my hands as a kind of oath meeting
Its intention inside the furniture is growing
Up through the spiral of the hooked rug