Late Romantics

A trampled stalk of grass has learned the new math.

And the live fishing bait you’ve hidden in a drawer

squirms softly, softly. Hand me that showpiece.

Observe: the Andes shrinks to the size of a dead moth.

I’m blent into the instable Mannerism of damaged clouds,

self-fangled with their blue fuselage of hallucinations.

Birds, overwintering, jangle their hoop of janitor’s keys.

Nothing disintegrates—it’s only rearranged.

If you have any concerns, ma’am, please

speak to the management. We accrue a legion of genders.

Everything fermented with fried meat and sour candy

in the food court at the mall. Everything

on a feedback loop, indebted to the least

feasible shades of evening’s slackening light.

Of course, you are the rain walking off, away

from its whole life. A roan horse has fallen

down on the street. Still, nobody notices

the hearse driving into the sea.

Survivalists

The gnats go on plying their tiny lawn mowers

through the orchard-scented

                                                       summer air.

God doesn’t have to be the only prime mover.

An ant colony founded a new order in my ear.

Sure, sometimes I’m overcome

                                                       to say something

resiliently sincere. But then I recognize how foolish

any words are. What do you care about

                                                           umpteen

bazillion organisms—

                                         when the sumptuous foliage

near-at-hand’s a tinseled counterpoint of harp-light?

I spend all afternoon sounding

                                                 my intrinsic sensibility.

But you—you are my favorite. You

                                                  and your odd lots,

your pained refusal to be fabricated by committee.

Scrog and lady fern at the pond’s edge are glossed

by sundown

                             like an aspirin dissolving in its glass.

Prayer

There are good reasons to

do without any need for

unseasonable proofs.

The sky isn’t really blue.

The blue is in your own

brown eyes. A tree feeds

the air and the air looms

down to bulk up its roots.

The levity of all evidence

and elusiveness of truth

are things to be assumed

like all the atoms we use:

that use us to see them

-selves and all we’d ever

know. Loony chatterbox,

to whom are you talking?