Obviously not about Writing Poetry
A small or large machine which you literally build
constructing even the source
of your materials
like a birdfeeder
a house
a monument
likewise treat as an otherworldly animal
from scraps and garbage, the purpose–take your mind,
as if chronicling
memory…
what season
what snow
or dirt piles…
woodpile, instruction manual,
hedgerows–choose an ordinary object–a door,
follow with a series, selected,
an eye toward insight:
locks
darkness
floods
or night. Realize there is no
reason, no fixed form. A list coheres as democracy,
the crucial play, opening your mind
in terms of opposites–
your name on a blackboard
fading slate
hands strong on glass
disappear, bridge, relink muscle.
Invisible hinge, set burning, salvaged by the muse,
where stops flow until jazz
is recharged–
all two-by-fours
behind scenes
secret coherence
carpenter nowhere visible, plank,
nail, slowness. Tone strong on its own, often
love it, do it again, discover ten and twenty snows
echo a single cadence, oddly good.
