Prelude

Outside: waiting;
outside

not a leaf leans forward
not a lark flies
not a stone bends towards
not a branch rends sky

Still. A white stag blurs the water as he drinks
Still. A huntsman sits, pommeled by his girth
Still your dead stir, crying
in damp earth.

Outside seeds are breaking;
outside bones are burst;

Fracture frees marrow and germ
from the seething berm.

My grandfather's globe (A/V)

My grandfather's globe in A/V format.

My grandfather’s globe

The world becomes intricate miniature
shrunk down to a sphere you turn in your hand.
One’s fingers slide from islands to mainland
without ruffling water’s cool composure.
Each country’s a tile of some precious stone:
mother of pearl, jade, lapis lazuli
whose hued reflections jockey for the eye
and whose contours belong to each alone.

Still they fit in smoothly with their neighbors
integrating the continents of land
to satisfy by completing jigsaw
a singular and comprehensive awe
that at such scaling knows no countermand
in populace’s destructive labor.

At the stop called grace a dieu (A/V)

At the stop in A/V format. The image is one of my brother's from a series he did of lost, single shoes, gloves and other unpaired twins he found in his wanderings.

At the stop called grace a dieu

Spare sun in Paris. Nothing goes right
he thinks as his belly lurches hungrily.
Nothing might appease him on an unappeasable day:
even eating implicates a future want.

A woman cries allez-allez in the alley
while a forked man shifts his long baguette
boarding a gray bus
at the stop called grace a dieu.

Cocoon (A/V)

Cocoon in A/V format. The chrysalis image is courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net