Do No Harm
As if the bird were not in one room, but many, and making the sound of many seabirds pinning dunes to blue and vibrant yards of wind. That sanding down was why, was surely what I felt the credo was, no mean or desperate motion, no graceless tangling in the rafters, but light as fire to an open flue, the relic beehive feathering up to ashes in the draft. This was where I told myself to live. And pressed my life to going over everything I did.
Chair
The chair is a gesture. Of all the motions, there are two hands always pulling the chair out, or one hand saying, Sit down, it’s free. Now its wood shines with absence. Now it hardens to oak. Of all the wearing evenings and mornings, the chair, unlike a boat, is never named. Years pass and the chair goes by in duplicate, profligate, a map of lowered anchors printed so small they look like stars.
Compounding Pharmacy
Disquiet adopts a whetstone’s grit An undercroft had better be what you think it is A timepiece cleans its feathers in the spring As a windfall is wise to attachment Attachment is a metaphysic hunting from the ground
Unsound Supposition
Dampened drums of thunder, strong sheets of rain you eye through the front door window, numbering the obligations to a house. Unsound supposition, that this overflow was caused by leaves. Cleaning the gutters, you’d had two wasp-stings in one day. The unaggressive paper-wasps had only just derived the delicate umbel of their hive. Acid for wasp venom, alkaline for bee. How deadly sweet it is, a datum, so way beside the point, but pointed nonetheless, desirable stings of quibbling, quarreling, jockeying for the smallest powers. I read that Petty Dancers is an older name for Northern Lights. A whale had fur. A whale was once a proto mouse.