Ocean and ars poetica
Ocean
My table is an ocean,
these books are windy boats.
My mug of coffee’s floatin’
and so’s my cup of oats.
--
Ars poetica
The stakes of the question are huge
but you keep averting your eyes.
In your heart, Possibility has forgotten
all of its appointments and lies down
to sleep. Divested of the words
you need to reproduce those contracts,
some of which were worth an afternoon
of labor and others years,
you find it hard to call the second person’s
name: “do you remember my face?”
is the closest you come to revealing
that it was your signature, in your hand,
inscribed beside my own. Not in guile
but in the honest profusion of answers
that arose to satisfy the mounting need,
tantamount to conspiracy against
the hegemony of your own soul,
did you exchange the antecedents
of those sacred pronouns, you, me,
with mere poetry. Around the turn
of the road rising out of the river valley
you see the mountains brilliant in blue
and clear purple. Too painful, you say,
too painful, as your tongue forms a melody.