Words work so hard to carry us,
carry us away from the cut-knee sidewalk
or the covert of broken saplings
fallen hunter impaled through the heart.
To look at their faces you wouldn't know it,
mollycoddling with ingenuous quizzicality
or lipping rivered wisdom beneath kind eyes;
if they dry of sense they jingle savoury.
Their prime season comes when leaves shred
tattered and austere, when drear consumes
where brightness shone profuse;
in deserts lie deepest enchantments.
They put in the mileage to distance a sun
erect a big straw body of evidence, convince
the very years that they have flown;
compartments properly labelled 'present' 'past'.
Create a sighing cadence round the latter
tint it sepia, untangle a bundle of strings
untwist and fray them, worry them apart;
it really is the present that should matter.
Close your eyes, essentialize;
let us extract a kind of chewing gum;
taste these silent phrases of rumination;
let these truths trickle down your throat.
But working mouth pauses, habit falls open,
when blackbird bills unseat you from your steed;
you gawp like a baby bird, a baby
seeking your needful feed, this feed.
