Late December.

I imagine the waves have said things to the wind

We'll never know.

Watch the edge for a wisp of a clue,

The question comes first,

Then the asking party,--

Tastebuds.

The wine generously wasted

As anticipated darkly stained them,

In the smoke they kissed

When their acid speaking voices ceased.

In the kisses for which their cleared throats thirsted

The pebbled tart syllables slipped

And

They tasted.

A truffle hunt.

An abbreviation with snout down

Sniffing at the frost

For the profit of its rhapsodic sacrifice--

Or likelier and sillier still,

The aromatic sum it casually lost.

The winter affection.

Purity, it turns out, is harsh,

Dew-lined lips, but blade-enforced.

The edges won't slice so much as ask,

With each pinked line: am I to pass,

Jabbed, and again--

Yes or no, did I pass?

The answer is certainly certain,

Though in certainty beyond grasp.

The very young.

A tiny staggering drunk wishes to be heard:

Dearest ship, ragtops and waves promote the lonesome

Distance.

Can you hear above the loudness of the seadrums?

Is it so loud that the shrift of my company

Grows lost?

Is the memory of me the rhythm of your memory?

The wishing voice begs.

What hewn warmth

Knows such a winter's distance?

And with what capability does it travel,

To the assistance of the

Trembling, awful wish?

Oh, but in memory...

AFTER the war the crumbled wall was well at rest. With time and the expense of memory it said in wasted bricks, "You have fallen, but not so completely."

Dust revealed the blush foreground, the light as it was, then,

Watched with purple eyelids, and

Said now, "You have fallen, but not so completely".

The olive branch.

The dream is a permutation of

A wish--

Even if it's a nightmare:

A bird's dearth vanishes in the clouds;

It hopes, intriguingly, naturally,

As hope encourages

So fruitful and distant, gaining.

Bonfires.

The skin wrinkles and relaxes--

It is cooperative.

The feral eyes see auburn consequences

In the fires

Of the festive.

.

Gold in the light and

Of no good value to the Earth,

The ritual of digging them up is sacred.

Look how the last umber sun floods my hand,

Fingers relaxed inches from where they searched

So long.

Advent.

Spend wisely on the new.

Which breathes because we were smothered,

Which eats because of fire and we fed it

--which labors in a croak of silence

While we sleep and dream heartily of its safety.

In an orchard, nearby.

It speaks in shoots and little peaches,

Having learned the vocation from great hands

In wide-slung reaches.

How does it emblem the young restives of

Nativity?

It decides each by each,

Arid furors and dewy peaces.

Real poverty.

Wind is the prosperity vested in the senses.

As such it ought to be respected.

Most nights when it's cold you

Leave in a sweater, tightened to yourself

From the beggarly weather.

To the familiarest shadow.

The cad said to the same cottage,

"I wish you knew."

There are two of everyone

And of some more.

The spare answer.

Fit armaments pant for the spare answer;

The field and sighs correspond.

They are not ready, their temple of grass and

Gulfs of wishes:

They are not ready.

Scenic burden.

Gerhard Richter Mustang-Staffel (German 1964)

The bird, atilt, expects of the green air

What the ocean brings

To its homely carriage--

A graveyard begged to wait.

Stolen silverware.

So with touching it--rushing, reveals.

So, with so little to keep tame hands still

Theft occurs, dropping the wealth

The tame steals.

The orphaned state.

Behold the disappearance of the Origin.

The consolations cricket-chirping, a new rainy sea

Of umbrellas above the orphaned state it sticks us in.

See the fleeting softness of its cheek aglow--

Fresh and mysterious

From the hips of a ripened rosy volcano.

History has grown shorter,

Telling us about these disappearances

Incomprehensibly, and

In order.

Mirror image.

What begets isn't at all conscientious, often running late

And apt to forget.

Regretting is true, knows only it's one lush

Reflection: regret.

The brief passes.

The light forfends

Its idle collaborators.

What narrows to cross the pass

Escapes with an accuracy

Betrayed by every shadow.

(bit)

In this instance he would go inside himself to the land where he and his sister had grown up, where he, rather, they had already begun to prepare for their children. The invisible generation still waiting to appear, they were to tend all the familiar things.

But inside it was not the kind of place he could look at or walk past--instead it was a blue coil reverberating with a chill tone. This was forgiveness. He might've had a field of hearts to share this choice, all for naught. He spent those moments, that evening, choking on the one he had.