The other sugars you know.

The sweet berth is so unlikely to be banked down--

to spare bank civilizations, To spare our towns.

It must flow up and low and

To either side.

And when it goes,

Such a startling light, it aweighs,

Crests--I must, short of knowing just suppose,

In moonly sucrose.

The lyre bird.

Portrait of Ella Mae Morse, singer.

Words have had it unkind,

Taking the better parts of

Centuries to finally get

The standard tongue's bent

And thrive.

Not so for the lyre, a bird, land-bound,

Left here, who was hatched out

Surprisingly as his throat cleared and

Songbook already fit with sound

He corrupts once in his own favor then

Once against.

He knows his own name amid the glossary

Of sounded-out animals, a choir of

Would-have-beens and precipitants of

The echo--the rest of them, they scurry.

To the evolved shoulder--fit as the bird's sharp tongue,

Carry. Your job as opposed to flying is to carry.

The moss ark.

Ed Ruscha - 'Me' (American 1999)

The moss ark was built less out of assistance or purpose

Than it was of substance.

Once, as its own soul dictated, it was carried--

Having been sought and excavated,

Then allotted space in worshipping eyes

Then buried.

See, in fact, how gracefully the observer glances to

Read the carved line on the stone,

Then hurries to look back?

Off map.

I shouldn't go too far aside of my own foot--

But I was humbled to research and disregard, and push--

I did look. Nobody was at the party.

The only one who

Hasn't found her way home

Was with me.

The vigilant lamp.

Laughter is practical. The seam prepares to

Split, but instead it fashions

A zipper.

Watch, now, lover,

Watch how fallow it once was

And how wasn't no longer

Substantially-and neither faithfully, is.

(He is full of dreams to buy your birthday--its candlesful of wishes.)

Empty swimming pool.

Ernie Bushmiller - Sluggo Dreams

The depths lie somewhere between white and an ineffective blue,

Drained, but cluttered--Waiting to be raked up.

Neighbor girls who remember the summer

Tattletale on its leafy edge, faces just--

Wheatswollen.

The room they take up is where I was when I saw myself

Admired.

The surface glare broadens like an I surrender flag for the kids

nightly.

It's why I love her,

Strewn around these kinks and nicks

And purpling knuckles

Is the memory of the hands with which I

Once prayed.

This parishoner gets spared, and the rocks get treated kindly by the light.

This place on Earth must certainly be Heaven.

The stream-smoothed rocks, one after another glisten--

It's as if they have captured the naive burnishes from Heaven

And amid the cursing flush and grit disbursement they glow.

The moon is beyond reproach.

The beating heart serves behind glass--but don't worry!

The glass is colorless and the message is colorless.

Each thing thrives. Look!

The glare is beyond reproach and the palpitations are as well.

The onlookers gather and their humid awe gathers. We turn the lights out

and the moon is beyond reproach.

Mansion.

So seldom do we grasp the plentitude of what we admire.

We fall over in love and then we are lost in these vaults--

For the cup and the humbling wage.

Love poem.

Wait, it's not that there's new honey!

But I look at the dare of the sun-dried grass

And it's so flush and winding

--and Her!

Is it not new honey stripping me of

what little wisdom I ever had?

I will always beg for you by name.

Andy Goldsworthy (U.K. Recent)

The heart is contrary,

And droops when it is responded to.

Cracked in wisdom it hasn't a policy about lying--

Just a policy for being lied to.

Oh.

Rembrandt van Rijn - Self Portrait, Later in Life (Dutch 1660's)

Oh,

Acreages and old folks' eras parse the rented landscape--

In each throat a maturing voice drones its

Rich and poor story.

But none are quite like the cock-bell song as it arrives in the humidity--

And goes.

The goodnights.

Sometimes it is similar to a balloon--

Each tensile point of its tent is sponsored

By the wild air.

This is also true about the night. Lovers fill them

With wishful "goodnights"; so much goes into each.

Finally one day we'll be forced to rename it;

The stormy "I love you" place will need

Us to call it something.

But what?

Your breath bricks up and floods the floor; the architecture

Falls on me. My breath is lost.

I cannot speak and I wouldn't if I could now.

Keys lack wisdom--

Good thing, I lose them too.

This dog is falling asleep beside me.

And my memories, oh what are they?

Just look how the apartment ends and the rest begins.

The crop circle.

We have crossed the wood and path

To find a wild mosaic,

One in our aspiration similar to

The one we'll leave.

Niggerhead.

"Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity."

-Frederick Douglass

These specific linen alterations

They don't stain less--

If forgiven

The hum of starch mercy can't assuage the havoc of their ceremonial uses.

Applauding the love of every gregarious grasp, clasp untorn,

These which we seek to protect can neither be created

Nor destroyed,

Nor re-cherished in familiar uniform.

Imagine you, young solider, not so much as less of the hem.

So much as more of what is so faithfully and foolishly worn.

Tomorrow these emeralds.

Bo Bartlett - Dreamland (American 1998)

Could it possibly be all the staining love I have seen

Is now before me?

My eyes brim with jeweled tears--

Easily and free--

Each one confiscated from a heart,

Each labeled,

Each as promised restored to the return addressee.

Each, my Love, safe.

Tomorrow these emeralds will grow amid the grasses.

This conveyance of the soul you too shall see.

Their river of time.

The beloved bank-side sleepers

And their river of time--

How nearby are either to

The witless hand

As it endures all it touches?