4056

 4056

A fiddle with the procedure

Leaves ladies-in-waiting wilting

Through unstudied hours;

Schedules the undiscovered

For present complacence;

Topples cathedral towers

In a faithful flaw;

Warps the fabric of a bespoke

Conception, scored just so.

4055

 

4054

4054

The cat as talisman:

Flower but no flower,

He endures reflection;

The narcissi are clawed in peace.

.

Shield from expectation:

His eye is native to his heart

And blind to the beating hour;

His what's to be is past.

.

Exemplar of indifference

This atemporal beast;

In his mirrored soul a tower

To shadow any care.

4053

 

4052

4052

Having the sky and needing it too

Like a sailor lost at sea

'Customed to horizons

But not eternity;

.

That sets his sheet by compulsion

Aslant the wanted point

To leave ajoint the misconception

Of reflection in a glass.

4051

 

4050

 4050

Nature's imp, a fragility

Lights my sleep's hid conceits

Like a noon at midnight;

A bedded thought to block the sun,

And a shadow to touch my arm:

This long day's day is done.

4049

 

4048

4048

In this behavioral suite

An eager peevishness

Rooms youth undone;

Pointless exactitude

Scrapes at sufficiency;

A fearful retrospection

Is penance in a broken door.

What sere dream of abandonment

Bent this stained and polished floor?

 

4047

4047

An inconsequential illness

After a period

Proved a comma in a sentence

Of the narrative in

That slighty armature:

What's seen becomes your own

In a very small place.

Outside is a different hour

Wide in its careless space.

 

4046

4046

Ever on the edge:

On the verge of innocence

When shadows uncalled for

In perspective lie unfelt;

Til reflection on a border

Bends it,

Measurement veer the line,

And what's between is mine.

 

4045

 4045

Punctilious this fear

That knocks at its hour

With a spectral writ;

Quick proceeder!

Of myself

Author and deliverer.

4044

 

4043

 

4042

4042

Each moment with its fellow joint

Makes a present curiously wrapt

With every yesterday;

Till the enclosing ribbon

Has weightless run its way.

4041

4041

Pervious to sparrows,

Who leave seeds in my pockets:

To unpointed minutia,

That knots into myself;

Memory, that tends what I see,

Too the just past, that suits my brevity.

 

4040

 

4039

4039

At the intersection of memory

And its making partners

Of the moon and circumstance

Stands solitude's totem,

To which the sun itself is correspondent,

Though it be but a sand of recollection,

A dim vespers to a festival

Of the figured I. 

4038

 

4037

4037

I live by the way

When not looking but

At the cat's green eye,

The heavy snow and wall of sky,

And maybe Bruegel's hunters trudging by

On the way to eternity

Borne with a patient eye

As weightless as the snow and sky.