Four Poems

Aftermath

If you were here we might discuss it all

                the rhyme-schemes of starlings
                the ramifications of squirrels
                that creature, that hyena laughing
                in the trees and how the blue hour
                really feels and why it is that song
                thrush always likes to smash
                an escargot into the wall



Detour to Rapture

Strange to come upon them shoving and rubbing
shoulders (without shoulders), charging about

a sure-fire shoal, a mass of marmalade bodies
in perpetual, Brownian motion. Why should I feel

so buoyed up by them? Or that I did right to spurn
the Cast Iron plant, skirt the Yucca and glancing
...