Tripping
. . . the words were all ours and it was enough that we held them in our hands to play with them; whatever you can play with is yours, and this was the beginning of knowing
—Gertrude Stein, American Language and Literature
A vase then in sunlight
A refraction of a passing
of the manner of a predication
of a stoppage clock worn
of a shadow bending
voices suddenly along the spaces
A sunlit just there and the myriad
of beasts gathered
just as words carried from a valley a stream a mountain
just there to be cherished, fondled
our toys with which to build
a temple or
perhaps a poem,
two-storied angular a whisper through a prism
the spaces shaped about a silence,
a cry among the mountains
the heapings then of
an unused noun, a basket of verbs
no commas allowed
nothing bought or sold
our hands wiped clean of all the refuse
our hands a shape a shaping
a plane of light
a vase
a wording
a flattened as of
a book a book
closed.
Object
a stance of space, a time occupied
a shadow there behind
as though a tomb
an angular of stone & carvings
a hint of paleo of distant hands
unworded
a making of a need
a mind
& the object
a definition become a real
as though to whip a meaning from an
ocean’s broil
a clown & the object
a mask & a stone
the silences hidden within the OBJECT
a poem of unknowns
a Magritte refusing all margins
of a familiar
the ashes of it
drifting westward
a clouding a departure.