from Midsts
Fifty Preps Toward Kindling
What is the proportion of sepia-toned light
to scorching torrents, every part first rate?
Even before that, go over the bright plan.
Only next time, what? Be a good husband, make faces,
diagram the big thrill I’m sure of, atom and heart,
so basic to talk to. Roll in, grass-stained.
Seriously fucked up? No. Fine, go on,
print words fast, spend money, bank it
on everything we do. I remember myself alone in
darkness with the faintest vertical green line, an uneven touch.
I mean feel past… You see change consumed with rushing,
on edge—in shirt sleeves and string tie. Bottles break
in the alley, but no one listens endlessly
to what they already know. Be glad of that.
How to Answer
Blood is great. So is hair. I squeeze them closed, flat.
Effortless gleam goes out when they become food.
No one asks me about risk or planet history. All my waiting
is reason wearing thin; gleam goes out a little.
Squeeze anything closed about risk to make it bigger.
Thank you for being strange and naturally on fire in your cells.
What we think of at the stream’s bushy edge proves
summer is rarely icy around here, and your fine chestnut hair
flows like ink from a Pelikan fountain pen’s engraved gold nib.
Pigeons dart up together hours before frog croaks get
heavy enough to break. I love your voice boomed against me
and count on its cue for moonlight rims spread an inch.
Spidery Blanks
Discussing track and field with my postal carrier, Chan Li,
I confess deep love for pole vaulters who ready themselves by
visualizing a plush river of stars dividing darker cosmic quarters,
themselves in that flow. More momentum than speed, vaulters sail
over the crossbar, imaginations intact, hardly aware of
what grounds them—home ports, planet mass, parents.
Chan concentrates to sort mail cleanly: intent and consequence.
You don’t learn anything from facts in order; well of course you do.
What’s loudest, after all, ocean waves breaking, church bell tolls,
rocket liftoffs, garter straps snapping, rainfall on skylight glass?
Here’s a postcard for me with a Rancho Palos Verdes return address,
date-time stamped September, I-can’t-read-the-day, 1971,
written in 11th century Japanese “lady’s hand.”
May’s dogwoods bloom first in the palest possible green then turn white.
Sun-bleached hairs on bare, tanned manly arms—mid-summer.