screens

The streets here do have names. They have gamy
names blocked white on green. They're static screens
to trick my mind into growing. It clicks them knowing
they won't open, change or go. It will, and it glows
to burst its frame, connecting all those collected names.

mud

I'm this shoe stuffed with mud,
brown in brown on brown. The ground's not
firm, not firm enough. Don't step
with me. Slide into me, and don't
take out my even browner tongue. Tattered
leather, leave it. Leave it there, folded in,
pinned in with more mud, and in on itself. It'd rather
not flap loose. To move would twist it, and twist
its words looser. That's the trap. Keep it still
here to brown with you, and the browner mud.

weight of water

I walk with this world, its weight of water,
its wispy welcomes, once denser,
not now, not where I've wavered, and wait
for a way, or ways to another, and the words,
all the words for its blues,
all of these blues wasted,
were I not to meet her,
she who'll walk me
to others, and their mothering worlds

tricks

The white plays tricks, not sticking to one place, not stuck. It gives
premonition as its gift, the sight of aging, and of uplifted eyes. These lucky lives
I've lived separately, if not apart, they know. I'm desperate to hear it, some part of how
what's left me, who, can't really, not fully go. And she. Yes, she's here, but not now.

plans

What the crisp air whispers is maybe wise, not clever. It's, "Nothing
goes according to plan, unless the plan is going."
I found myself going into its blowing bits of brown
knowing the wiser winters I read lie to me. I lied, too, down
this yesternight's morning, with a plan to wake and plan
to go. What I woke to was, in a new day's night, shaky spans
of distant fires prickling a purple-black. Take them, back with me,
wake-walking into whispering airs and unplanned mysteries.

all souls

All souls follow in the hollowed out
steps of saints   They walk a fine line,
up the nine that's eleven and leads to ten
not twelve   This hour is the mild breeze's
It teases with a scent of wild onion while water flows
below the city street   I follow the hallowed light   It sneaks
past the slate bottoms of clouds, then rises