911

910

909
Hazard's exfiltration
Of present from the past
Is the office of a moment
Who's duty's first is last.
Memory's a suitor
With proposals--to time--
Of selected emendation
To suit narrative's creation.
In memory I lie--
Its case indifferent show--
A symbol writ in water--
What's gone is what I grow.

908

907

906

905

904

903
The seashell as condign artifact
Of a program fault:
You'd bent over its abstract
Organic
As your spine's curve
Whose calcited nodes were conversation once
To my weary head in a wooden room--
Now shell once scarfed in sand
And shadowless day
Is specimened in glass,
Imperfection's calculus unsubdued.

902

901

900

899
The reality is singular it's the wind
And not the field's green wave of it--
Nor shape of cloud nor star but sky--
The dappled grass bends still,
In dark and light--
Nor time but future foregone--
Nor other word but your eye.

898

897

896

895

894

893
In the shelter's
Alcoholic pigeon's draggled feather's
Jaunty bobbling--
In this post-meridian backlit sprig's
Counterswing to his parading march--
Is spring's flag, at once
Instant's hinge and swinging season's arc.

892

891

890

889

888

887

886

885
Insomnia's edgeless hour
Weighs sun on eye,
Where present from itself is pressed
And time unwatched freely winds
In labyrinth.
.
Cross the dusk sky
Bird by rule--
A skein of memory,
Seeming-self,
In sleep surcease.

884

883

882
When the knife comes
Is that the edge and it must
Ever due that point
And division blunt,
It is an air of stone
Noumena of absence,
Of what is and will not be.

881

880

879

878

877
Past without memory
The old photo,
Of happed evitability
Comprised, an eye,
Hand, unfettered by a moment's leash
To mark the epoch of a stranger.

876

875

874

873

872

871

870

869

868

867
Oh longing-- it is as breath drawn--
What did the tree dark speak of dusk--
One strains to hear, not listening
To shadows that may be giant--
Such a pulse! Is it hidden there?
The branches vein of paler night?
It must be you so far away.

866

865
In the morning glass of trains'
Affinity for reflection
Is nature alike in held and holder--
The narration's stuff for author and actor;
Mirror's flash of sun for the other.

864

863