Breitengrad

 

 

the undetermined future

nightfall blocks out

other possibilities

gather at the stage door

 

last inklings slow me

through barricade raised

forced through as open range

in arbor hung inverted

 

to the searing

last moment of air

particulate air

slowing a spot found

 

on a wall in the wing

green rectangular light

balance held at speed

the road doesn’t waver

 

but turns over in its carriage

in an ill-fitted suit

statisticians replace my shoes

 

a cement block breaks

tree trunks to rubble piled

neatly nightly by stagehands

I can smell myself

 

salt-stained white

coastline dampered marimba

questions deferred like

who do you live with

 

how can you trap the sky

in its present state I act

as though every day is

unable to catch me

Close Quarters

 

 

brick                brick                     bricklayer

brick

 

one carried over scaffold

crane            crane              operator

 

roof re-roofed

skylight now

 

further from sky

a ton          tonnage

 

how weighty strong

or stiff sun                   world shouldered

 

gutted cellar to ceiling

grows from its gutter                an oak

 

door             next door

neighbors maneuver

 

into driveways

without complaint

 

souls compliant                   appear

to love us             let us

 

loft a tarp into crispened evening

roll back their own

 

cover         to reveal dilapidation

world without burst pipes

 

amen         as in agreement

 

as in second language

meaning more lost than conveyed

 

hear creator as reactor

envision fallout

 

can’t go back

every year the disrepair

 

hear despair           correct to disappear

depends on winter’s

 

severity                   surveys

homes         steps from the roadway

 

famished                   hear furnished

pull up the last chair in the room

 

by this means     (these means)

wounded     wound in gauze

 

still too far away

to see clearly

 

in the calamine gloam

not a day stretches

 

toward its successors

but twilight’s succor         my own reflection

 

the holding still one             replaced

with         way to go

 

or where they went

turned green              an abscess

 

in my absence               certain landmarks

visible from one direction            stand out

 

leave pets                       plants

the perishable

 

ovations         moments of silence

greeted as granted

 

givens            offered without goading

I hound the lost until found