Monday, January 27, 2014

drafts of unfinished poems

*
WHO SEES

I know the alphabet of loss is like a man
who sees a woodblock print
each time he looks at a tree
whose yardstick measures all the span
between his gaze and its reality

his books are filled with what he holds
between his gaze and what its leaf forsakes
beside a shrine where waters lapse to pray
his ego may not vacate the years enough
the distance that only the foreswear hears

can I detain the ruins a little with my life
that toad whose aftervintage pages vanish
laden with update escapes my anon descends
flopsteps where I stand sneezing into a crown


/

*
WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?

Maybe it's the blueprints
Which the sky must use
To build another house
To move into since

It must leave from here,
Leave its first home here
For a second residence
Without parents,

Because parents fall
With the sunset each day,
They abandon us all

Again and again to
Night, or some bright new
Domicile.  We cannot stay.

///