THAT WILL TO DIVEST

Action creates

a taste

for itself.

Meaning: once

you’ve swept

the shelves

of spoons

and plates

you kept

for guests,

it gets harder

not to also

simplify the larder,

not to dismiss

rooms, not to

divest yourself

of all the chairs

but one, not

to test what

singleness can bear,

once you’ve begun.

WINTER FEAR

Is it just winter

or is this worse.

Is this the year

when outer damp

obscures a deeper curse

that spring can’t fix,

when gears that

turn the earth

won’t shift the view,

when clouds won’t lift

though all the skies

go blue.

GRAZING HORSES

Sometimes the

green pasture

of the mind

tilts abruptly.

The grazing horses

struggle crazily

for purchase

on the frictionless

nearly vertical

surface. Their

furniture-fine

legs buckle

on the incline,

unhorsed by slant

they weren’t

designed to climb

and can’t.

WASTE

Not even waste

is inviolate.

The day misspent,

the love misplaced,

has inside it

the seed of redemption.

Nothing is exempt

from resurrection.

It is tiresome

how the grass

re-ripens, greening

all along the punched

and mucked horizon

once the bison

have moved on,

leaning into hunger

and hard luck.

FORGETTING

Forgetting takes space.

Forgotten matters displace

as much anything else as

anything else. We must

skirt unlabeled crates

as though it made sense

and take them when we go

to other states.

THE FOURTH WISE MAN

The fourth wise man

disliked travel. If

you walk, there’s the

gravel. If you ride,

there’s the camel’s attitude.

He far preferred

to be inside in solitude

to contemplate the star

that had been getting

so much larger

and more prolate lately—

stretching vertically

(like the souls of martyrs)

toward the poles

(or like the yawns of babies).

BEASTS

Time lingers

quietly in attics.

Romantics are

always fingering

some discolored

fabric or other,

feeling a deep

nostalgia for sepia,

a mellow sadness

at what keeps

but yellows.

But other people

don’t trust ambering

or court the filigrees

of rust. They’ve

seen lost greens

of memory ignite,

dead dogs released,

and don’t invite

the rainbow beasts.

GAPS

Gaps don’t

just happen.

There is a

generative element

inside them,

a welling motion

as when cold

waters shoulder

up through

warmer oceans.

And where gaps

choose to widen,

coordinates warp,

even in places

constant since

the oldest maps.

THE FABRIC OF LIFE

It is very stretchy.

We know that, even if

many details remain

sketchy. It is complexly

woven. That much too

has pretty well been

proven. We are loath

to continue our lessons,

which consist of slaps

as sharp and dispersed

as bee stings from

a smashed nest,

when any strand snaps—

hurts working far past

the locus of rupture,

attacking threads

far beyond anything

we would have said

connects.

HELP

Imagine help

as a syllable,

awkward but utterable.

How would it work

and in which distress?

How would one gauge

the level of duress