From “Coleshill”

The deer racing across a field

of the same clay and tallow

color they are—if they are:

or are they tricks of the light?—

must feel themselves being poured

and pouring through life. We’re not built

but become: trembling columns

of apprehension that ripple

and pass those ripples to and fro

with the world that shakes around us—

it too is something poured

and ceaselessly pouring itself.

February shakes the fields

and trembles in each yellow willow.

                                •

The violin’s back is not veneer—

the strummed wood shudders together.

Undivided by caution

each note is its own first thought.

My first thought’s a kind of prayer

that I might resonate entire—

sometimes it’s such a meager portion

shaking a little, as if it ought...

Every day, the same desire

to push myself through the door

that leads to some bright place,

brighter than the concert platform,

where the whole self echoes together—

the outer to the inner pleasure.

                               

                                •

Everything runs together—

the light smells of spring,

the unreasonable brightness

of this peg, this sheet, this line tethering

linen between sky and mud

as if the garden marked a pause

in that eternal return

whose looping trace is the blood

hissing through the ventricles.

Until you spill the lip

trembling on its bright liquid

all you need’s this play of surface—

all that you need. All you have.