The Last Line

Manuscript

And do you notice

pattern in it?

                       --Richard Kenney, The Invention of the Zero

 

It’s the music of the image that seems most true,

The song in the word, words the falling rain

On the page, on the eye: That sky gets emptied,

The page blurred, the eye blinded.

I’m willing to only sense there’s pattern,

Only see it faintly, a shifting horizon.

I swear there is nothing more

In this exhaled word but the gratitude

For Meaning. I believe, and feel the jackdaw

—See the purpose feelingly—and the spinning

Random love that trails along the lines and shifting

Thoughts: the shape of the quill, the wing,

The shining eye of the creator while speaking:

The pattern’s partial,

Lord...

The Sound in the Water

 

But in the end an echo of the real,

A recording of a dead voice: the dance

Around the purple dawn the swallows do

As they seek their breakfast. Look past

The connection the colon makes

And you’ll see them swirling just above

The water as if the air was ground,

As if they were made of that stuff

They shoulder with dark pointed wings.

 

What does it mean to yolk this morning

With your moment? I have understood

You more than you know, more in kind,

The clean understanding of the knife.

I sit with the cup of green tea, watch

Swallows dipping in the silent water,

Rings within rings on the surface

After their passing. I watch and I write:

It’s the music of the image that seems most true.

 

Absent from Felicity

 

What do you want? I’ll ask,

As if interrupted;

The poppy, turning its face

To me, replies with a glance

And silence, the sense of light

Showing my soul where to look—-

Turning to the west, seems

This sleep will never end.

But the sweetness

In the air will keep me

Here longer than I should stay,

Lingering, prevailing,

But in the end an echo.

 

Awake/Asleep

At last all things connect in the equinox,

Meeting at the fulcrum, in the equal night.

This I can celebrate. This I can want.

I watch the movement of the creeping fig—-

Or think I do—-and see my dreams

Through the days. Perhaps once I’ll

Be there, present to myself, and turn

(In the dream-life) to meet my own eyes:

 

What do you want, I’ll ask, as if interrupted.

Equinoctial Point

 

Eyes, the jay and the veins in open palm:

A sapphire matrix, an empty jar, the thrum

Of a guitar: The sound of love, the ruptured

Glass on the marble floor, the desire to run:

The spinning wings of the iridescent starling,

Runoff during the hard rain: A dovetailed

Drawer, the pruned rosebush, an excellent

Answer to my longing innuendos: Am I making

Myself clear? Now, when the sunlight slants

From its millions of miles just so through

The panes of my words, I can announce

At last all things connect in the equinox.