Light Years

The failure to transport himself to the green green
woods-through the sun-raked hollows of the marsh,
through convolutions of bramble and desiring thorns-
was a chronic failure. And yet he loved the earth.

The birds of poetry, like paper birds installed
against a geometric fog, addressed
themselves to him in guilty hush, wanting
him, his sleep, his torpor, his signal, crest,

scenarios of daylight and of noise.
The little triangle that was his home withdrew,
blanched and withdrew in wind. Whose harshest fingers,
lit by glossy rings, strummed at his window now?

He was not alone. The fish of poetry,
teased from the cool white mud, eyed him always on their slow
ascent to the dawnlit surface; and the moon
crossing the water, anonymous hero,

was sent to incite him and remove him to
the woods where he would be almost alone.
He could smell the crumbling bloom of the acacia.
The night stammered through mist and moss and stone.

Once more he turned to the chronic water
looking for an end, and once more saw the watery
bent image of a plane dangling from clouds.