PALMS
First a green opening,
mottled apples
viewed from above.
Was time of recovery.
Rain, that's life, on a bed
of red Mission flowers.
But when the danger passed,
dozens, but dozens, of more
insignia grew, the appetite
for comfort, went looking,
inner, tonal,
for where the green begins,
to where there's nothing,
but nothing
•
The wounds were balmed
around a palm and lizards
froze on one of two
two-by-fours.
Walls, but access
where salt off excess
pain was held, like a head
holds in what it can't get out.
Some algebraic thinking
spiked the shock of suffering.
It's when too much has happened,
more must be done.
Reason for the palm
leaves moved too fast to see;
and the question's out a candle.
Wind leaned its atoms on my cheek;
it's all Greek to me:
how motion is
like comfort's
only goal -- to prove. where I was,
I'm not now, is all I know.
Same as love & work,
much time's spent,
splitting a vacuum
•
Zeno saw, in his law,
an immortal immobility.
Birds succumbed to the regimen
of dots & found they were nowhere.
Worries & also words
bump through such dots, and blow
stark emblems on dangerous naughts.
Once stopped, they seem to be
gone, like an angel's position
is motionless. Can't see it once,
or only always.
I have to say it: character's no rock,
not after all's uncovered, wild
& tragic in its disappearing logic.
So much calumny is auto-
mechanic, it's victim wearies
of the traffic, changes course too.
You enter history
as words come into the air,
first letter first, and so on,
backwards
•
Caught in a war of yes against no
stands pity. It never moves
is why you can't see it.
There's some hum
as up from a grassy serpent,
makes pity look & look.
Dread's at work,
against, not for it.
Dread's out hunting pulses;
but pity's the one
that doesn't bat an eyelash:
more static than static.
About lonely angels
after a war: they carry candles
and the night street clicks
with wings, jokes & little heels. On a
banner: INRI, in regard to, Ah,
you know who. Still coming
till then. Of poverty's course
if you keep working, it feels worse.
Sore shoes on soft feet, as if
more's always too much, but less.
•
Stamp the Logos on the air,
father, next time, now.
Simple faith's a way not given
statement. Wonder sinks to golden
silence. Children
are abundant, ripen,
and some fall.
This way
order's order's all hidden,
or left to formulation:
pyramid & graph
scrawled on a diagram's dare.
Fanny Howe
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