1066

1065

1064

Van Gogh's sower in the sun

Strides a suicide's field

In his harvest planning

By the turn of numbered days.

These opportunity birds will ensky the report,

Clacking the sudden air.

1063

1062

The key to all mythologies

Lies not in the past--

Stranger locks

Close temporal chimeras.

You stand in the sun.

Marjoram is for midsummer; for middle age:

How do you spell yourself to yourself?

1061

1060

Lady in thy oracles

Be all my pasts remembered

As trifles of the time

Upon s pupil negligent practiced,

Small sanctimony adhering.

1059

1058

Sleeping light and certain shadow

And transience made a stone

Is a future self undone.

Antecedent to the completion

Of the stuff I have to hand

Is the hour of my hand's devising

Unlooked come to a stand.

Bloodless day to dawn wind stirring

The blades of warming grass

Have a valedictory taint--

The grass stirs still.

1057

1056

1055

1054

1053

1052
Was one of those excursions
Like first light random-shaped
By airs local and large,
Now interwove with this earth and sea's margin,
Our beach,
Reed and water scored to desultory words
Of sand and mist granular alike
To partial selves by love encrypted,
By affection ope'd.

1051

1050

1049

1048

1047
It is ___ but not
By Narmada such color it is a dream
Of confounding suitability--
Garment of folded wing,
A current of sun has bled
Your red and gold into the air,
And rippling Rewa joins the sky--
At earliest dawn, yet alone,
Would it be thus?
Or, to wash the water with hand and foot--
To be reverenced by a deity.

1046

1045

1044

In imagined contests

Animals, rare in judgement,

Tip social scales, and victor,

With self-praise warm,

Or cellphone laurel,

Conjure up scrupulous fears--

Animals, rare in judgement,

Make tokens character,

To slough the brunt of recognition,

To hide upon the skin,

To change one hour for the next.

1043

1042

Mr. Louis Mendes.