57. istle

 

the thistle things | in the field where

it is more thing than | the thingoid sky

all baby blue | and bedroomy

the hulking up of | the mountain no-one

you know has climbed | and may be a projection

from the drive-in theater | down the road

which might be | the least thingy thing

near this field of weeds | since the theater

has no seats | requires eternity’s darkness

to dim the lights | and shines (once celluloid,

now digital) still images | against a dim screen

to make us believe we see | the man’s hand

move for the gun | just before the other

man pulls out his gun | and shoots the

first one | dead

dead being the antithesis of thingness

a de-thinging | in the case of a human

sometimes urging within us | a re-

thinging | as we pump the body

with our warm air | to make it live again

 

the whistle whispers | in the field where

a thingless thistle | rustles in the breeze

you cannot see | yet believe surrounds you

even | curls around your ankles

coming at you from | everywhere and you

whistle back | into the wind

into the thought you have | of

the thought of what the wind could | say

what it could breathe forth into | a thought

you fought the urge | given over too much

to contemplation | too little to blithe

ignorance | the milkweed of human

kindness | the thick white sap

covering your fingertips | and in danger

of sticking you to yourself | of erasing

you | whiting yourself | exactly out

leaving the occupants of the field | as

a thistle that might not be there | and a

woman who many have | once | been

or so she thought she | might have

 

the gristle irritates | with its insistent

itness | a thingness overwhelmed by

its own thingness | its grating aspect

the way in which | it becomes invisible

by being discarded | eliminated from

your range of perception | yet still

palpably evident | against your

memory of its presence | chewn

and choked | against the teeth and

the soft extremities of | the mouth

only the uvula spared | the indignity

of rubbing up against | the gristle

too soft to chisel | yet it chips and

grinds into the teeth | leaving a token

of itself | not physical

in the recesses of your | mind exactly

where it stores everything | you refuse

to remember | yet remember anon

as you recall | a thistle whispering in

the field | of the gristle in your mouth