A Well-Trimmed Field
He woke as if a sound went silent, grass blades against his cheek. Enclosed in yellowed skin, he knew space, a sudden absence from the public dream.
Slowly, you invent him—head full of cancer, hands too frail to strangle supper. A single tree dots the open landscape, and you recognize a budding anger as it takes root in his vision.
He hits it, but you made him weak: every blow struck is at himself. He throws shoulders, rolls bones against the blunt wood, and things get red. Hurling himself, hurting, he plucks out his own eyes at the base, and waits.
He cries out, but I’m gone. He blindly disbelieves in me, but even you are starting to wonder.
The Church of Autumn
1.
A leaf
hangs—
darts grace
the second hand.
Hunters of the paper-thin drip on like ages,
impart the finest ripples as they come and unbecome.
Shadows hum, hopeful of the day
I’ll learn their spaceless ways in blood—
the day I’ll join them in the plural
to run along the circle without starts.
2.
The leaf
goes like a swing.
Singular, I swell in doorways, watching as the endless lie
of etched improvement on reflection ends.
Detachment costs a brighter color, a kneeling at the empty cup
before the path of open hands.
Toy soldiers fall sharply underfoot
and my hat of newsprint streams black in rain.
3.
The leaf
stops relieved in soil.
The skin is pinched—to hold it is to crush it.
The dateless parade spares no sigh.
They drag a cold wake, reading sex into each rhyme.
Still, the tree turns and my gravity is constant.
Loneliness is its own falling
and I step into my own surprise come spring,
watching buds and thinking of the grass, grown tall.