Distribution Automatique

Wednesday, March 10

Untitled poem: circa 1987

Unmixed, colors hold their integrity.
Digression: I thought about single minded pursuit,
That change meant subdividing oneself
In combination with parts of the world, viz:
To interact with means to become part of.
As for the primary, it is the domain of the particular,
Specifically the visual sovereign., lord of the merely proximate,
Lady of the soft familiar. Of course, at first
I was not ready for such bright shadows,
I faltered at the thought of the continuous,
I trembled at the feeling of ownership.
Battle ships tall in number ordained my sentences,
And, like any other pawn in this game,
I numbered the drawers according to my luck-
And things got misplaced and forgotten.
Don't be quarrelsome, I understand that
And recognize the duplicity of a leisurely denial.
Meanwhile the sky grew dark and serious,
Terrible lightning split the mailbox in two,
(A number with a way of knowing everything already.)
Down at the beach they strolled away,
While we sunned ourselves with silence and newspapers.

Congruence: an adult plays as a child playing as an adult
Playing as a child. A thing is like any other thing,
Each widens out believing in and not believing
And never waiting. And *now* we know that the beginning of the game
Is interesting because we don't know the end,
But in the end it is always the same. But we
Don't know it then. There's the lighthouse like it always was,
The horizon, the boats, this solitude, a favorite poem.
Pedantically, pontifically I observe that
The romantics had children too, that innocence
Must always exercise its charm. To us to be surprised
Presumes an absence, for her to remember is a joy.
We are learning to smile in spite of what we know,
She is learning to know bereft of any spite.