A History of A Future

Dark Night By Daylight begins in the grass behind the house
as the shadow of the roof is disappearing into sky.

And
then
it
was
as
if
several
things
happened
at
once.

This is an old idea. The things we bring to the picnic are all
old ideas. Bread and water, salt and cloth.

The
lines
of
your
part
will
be
whispered
in
your
ear

At the moment you’re meant to speak. In the trees,
settling birds speak one last time before sleep

And
you
always
want
to
think
you
have
heard
something
new

It is only a jay, and it may take delight in
making a fool of you, your small skipping heart.

Can
you
try
to
be
open
to
whatever
you
might
hear

Your line was to toss a small rock at the closed
pane of a window in the just-dark house.

The
dropped
sound
falls
straight
down
to
land
in
open
ears

The best part is the end, that incidental
silence that shows the rest for what it was.

The
last
sound
of
the
props
being
tossed
in
the
cloth

And gathered to carry away, and carried away.
The senses are left behind, senses left in the emptiness.

Echo & Ache
                       

Come back, sound of out-
stretched arms. Look away
from the bones pieced back
together. Last bright vision,
they buried the loved
little dog in the mound,
little bowl. A quarter
moon in a daytime sky,
a season at the threshold
between barrenness and being.
Lean, lean, to rupture.

What the clouds
come to cover is still
behind the clouds. Nothing
can banish what has existed
into never having been.
A bag in the back of the drawer
holds the teeth
that would have been
sorcered away
back in the other world,
back when the other world was.

Sing/e (ii)

She is not looking
into the lens, but the lens
is trained on the eye.

The beauty of the dying
leaf. Long light lining
the eye, the evening

meaning we are
not long for what
we’ve known, and she

sees beyond what is
before her merely
to the spaces that stay

dark between the trees.
When the shutter shuts,
the books end.