Process Music

Gripping the edge of the fabric

I smooth it with nothing but my knees no

Other weight pressing down against the fat

Dough of the floor little pinches

Of skin mold themselves so quickly

To the dull side of surfaces

An edge so fragile I am distracted

Forgetting why wrinkles matter but smoothing

Them anyway barely audible singing

Reinforces a sense of gravity between

Breaths the sun touches me

Through my shirt now passing

Over my face the warm feeling

Of something struggling

Still alive in its efforts

What is moving

I will ask myself again

As a child mimics the wide steps of his shadow

My mother calls to say I don’t need what

Most people need no time

To pick the socks off the floor I call this love

Hauling my legs across the street until

The motion steadies watching the leaves to see what they collect

In light

Something Tells You to Look (Elegy)

after D.D.

Maybe I can tell you about

This part of the house.

It used to be a beach.

This is where the tide came in.

This is where the sand hardened and

Turned a dark muddy-brown.

A seagull was burrowed in a dry patch of grass,

She was old and spotted

And maybe sick, and I carried

Her muteness inside me

When I walked the length of it one last time.

Now the people here wear giant sun hats

So they are always in costume,

Blocking the sun.

It is the sun I can’t write.

It is a bright thing

I hide from as it scatters

And passes through every wall.

You can base your whole life on something

That doesn’t know you exist.

It will not understand why you squint your eyes,

Why you whittle yourself down

To the shape of stalks,

Wait for the wind to tell you

The things leaving you are here.