Three Persons

The fields are infertile

as far as I can tell.

Their winter systems

sparkle like the diamonds

that pelt Neptune.

Limpid silvers

reflect in the dark

museums and theaters

back in town.

To them we run

to elevate our eyes

to a well-shaped ethics.

Colors are supplied

by our nervous minds.

•

Towards a just

and invisible image

behind each substance

and its place in a sentence

you must have been walking.

Well-defended, best

when lost from wanting.

Be like grass, she told me,

lie flat, spring up.

•

We drop the shadows where they are then

return to them

when the light has grown heavy.

You’ll take your time lugging the weight into our room.

Or stand over there in the shade.

We’ve never been too sure that we exist as the earth does.

We’re most at home in water

that soaks up the letters in our brains.

It could be we have been dry too long.

A spirit is a mess when excess spoils it.

•

I see them through the slats

and crack of the open window.

A cold rain. Leaves flipped

and palsied.

The river is brown near

the sand, loose banks and twigs

stick at the edge and a lilac’s

silhouette of a child I love.

How in the dark hole can I hide

if   I can’t get outside?

Then I won’t remember

what I did to deserve it.

That arch and bridge

will form a shape of repentance.

If  I’m hanging,

then judgment has been passed.

And I am hanging

upside down

head swinging towards the moon.

Years of  inversion.

A face in a mirror displaced

by its position outside silver.

And so?

Next will come muscle,

a little grief   but no shoulder.

•

You’re learning how to be a unit

with an infinite in its attic.

It’s not difficult.

Light is the last message.

White streaks like oil paint

are the first to appear along the wet railing.

Next similar colors

correspond by chance.

We would rather be (die) with total strangers than with partial ones

      we realized in the elevator going down.

It was the only time that day that we were as alone as we were awake.

Sensing a just

and impartial ghost

close to each living thing

I could see the genius

of  institutional religion.

Examine your conscience.

Confess in darkness

and take away a task.

Soon you’ll wash off flesh

scented by its parallel past.

What were your feet thinking in their hurry

to connect the parts?

Get the children to the other side!

What children? You were the one running.

There was never any other.