Two Poems

Lauds

Inhabit daylight, unfurl where it's found
or be entirely elsewhere, where there is
a cup circled with steatopygous
peaches floating on white porcelain.
Given, the tintinnabulation in
the ears at dusk will usefully pipe down
behind some music, street-noise smorgasbord,
hiss of a loss, of what's not possible
any longer, that's a shell clamped shut
on an unpromising fragment of grit
although a nacreous mother-of-pearl
sky is contained within. A dozen plump
oysters of hours, plate of a winter day
embossed with cloudy gilt chinoiserie.
The hours are hung with clouds, not flags,
...