257. In the Wonderworks of Whatever’s Left Behind

I. am

abed and ebbed
by featherlight & flight
from dreams of

{{{
American Heritage Mausoleums
log cabin houses for the dead
and Giant Abe Lincoln and
Little Folks on the Prairie peoples
each reduced to a Giant wooden head
and some member of my family }but,
by the rules of dreaming, not{
dying and waiting to die in a dry
white-sheeted hospital bed,
& crying
}}}

through parted gauze
of window curtains comes
not luminescence

but luminessence

and I can hold it
in my sleepy hands


II. am

up awhile and agile into morning

yet héávyweight from uncaught sleep
though’d seemed to have sleeping upon
and deeply through me

so in simplicity
for raining’s frozen coming’s
sake

I’d taken the tour
of rivers of asphalt
and bags and box into
the gassed car

hoping to beat
the freezing back
to my house

yet


III. am

caught in the humdrumming
sleetstorm

where ice is

agate
a gate
a gaze
a light

lithe

& later
frozen into slushy
cataracted white

under their own continuing
the ringing embellllishments
of their falling

inside I with fireplace
and zuppa di funghi
the deepening
porcini broth do sip

and’m warm enough
for Armagnac with
a maple-sugary vanilla
gaining ’gainst th’tongue

the knotwork detail
of any day’s life
any life’s day

with the thinking
of words to justify it


IIII. am

in my harbor
or our harbour

(one’s POV determines
what’s seen or forsaken)

I look and even seek
with greatest efffort
but find that I’m but

unwonderness
unworthiness
unseaworthiness

heading
thwartward

encased in winter
and winding whiter
and tighter with
the running out
of each day

my notion’s simple
architectural cuisine
the simplest image of

volute of balut

the egg of me
is a spiral
unwinding
into the final
encoffinment

of winter’s ice and promise


IIIII. am

feathered by fire
fettered by darkness
behind black windows
and warm

I see

fesswise across my field of vision
the turn and drive of car and
palewise the frozen rain

only through and into
the roundel of pupil
who studies all and sees
what of it there is to see

of whatever’s left behind

when knuckles’re rubbed
against th’eyelids
’gainst th’eyes

and the world is sable
but voided to show
running like a cinematograph
shapes of lozenge, mascle, rustre

shapes of lozenge
and mascle and rustre
against my tinkture’s
noir


IIIIII. am

not aflame
but beside
a flame or
flames &
burning &
I see the
burning &
think of

its bark blistering in the flames that

birch burns best