Hosannah.

Within the emptiness of a knot
Lies a view of the ocean.

How many silly, psychological dreams have I tolerated over the years

For a look?

The aviary.

All the rest was made of something less durable--so, naturally, it was all unreliable.

Never pass inspection. Never be
Recommended.

To duck beneath the eaves
Meant to cower from the world, from its
Bucklings of rain, its unlucky droppings, And whatever other lazy debris.

To look up

At all involved the fuss of protection--Sunglasses,
A helmet, a will. Pathetic.

Among the rest, where do we put the birds? Is there a dormant theatre, called. Themselves, where

The unprepresented things can be kept midflight, and
Dried, and managed?

It's tedious to think about, but what quick Scaffold design to erect-- where will they Eat, or mate? After all they must.

All of this, of course, surrounds the Exception.
We have always locked arms in
Emergencies.

We can relax in that unmusical air, and talk about the things we are sure we do Not understand.

Silence.

It clatters with mockery,
And refuses to budge.

Skidding in place, hogging the
Grass in the pit of its hostile

Blue hand.

Not an inch to either side, nor farther
Away will it go.

But draw it closer and it glides on a wave
Of sweetest humidity,

So quickly as to be misremembered,
Greeting you in an unfamiliar tongue.

It's now only a matter of time--we used to
Parse the time we had left in negotiable abstractions--months, full seasons.

Parts of your body fell from heaven
In the form of rain.

The Voeghtly.

The old icon statuary in the Voeghtly
is so worn away, to the point that features--and
for that matter, the corners of the letters
Commemorating them

Are nearly all lost.  Pocks and lichens
In between the important stuff
Have taken over, and

If you get close enough you can follow
A tableau--the past, the near future,
A grist of nudity, sleep, and forgiving mist.

Dust is where dust is
Albeit forceful in lording light and
Thin staffed for the disaster of dying.

One sculpted youngster stands atop an ash-color pedestal,
Lit by what fire he must have seen--

The sun or the neighborhood, after dark,
Til an adherent finally takes him up in his curatorial
Arms,

Saves him.

You will be our King Tut, he says to the boy. And I will make sure you never
Have to remember any of this why you yourself and others are remembered.

So, you want to paint a picture.

It is unfair white in a world of counting.
And so it is a world of unending disagreement. Petty eyes

Study petty fingers, flipping through
Stacks of stuff.

So, you want to be a collector.

Start with a cottage in the woods--
How many trees did it take, and which way
Does it face?

Is it shy to the light?
Or is it devoted to the sleepboat
Moonlake?

It was important to someone, once.

Does it wait in a predicament of beauty,
Half-built?

Now you count it out. The building blocks
And orphaned stumps, the yard made of what is near in flattened lumps.

The bottom line seems to not matter as it is
On its foundation, in its original
Habitat.  But when you carry it on your back

The oldest ounces of nowhere gain weight, and tend to matter.