Stemming  from Stevens

It’s not enough to cover the rock with leaves

— as if  vernal fluidities

could be enough for the stern assault of  fact.

As if  a living ornament,

light and subject to temporal  breezes,

could be enough to overcome despair,

that chunk of  something solid in the air,

unmoving, as words repeated are.

It’s not enough to cover despair

with motion. Motion itself  is flawed,

continuous motion a narrow, thin escape

from what is rooted. Leaves do sway,

but in truth, they’re only flapping out,

ancillary, uncertain, buffeted

this way and that. They remain the fact

they are bound to, involuntary notions

victim to the weather of  a day,

gripped by what has thrust between the rocks,

flexible as everything not rock is,

reckless as imagining is reckless.