Utrecht, Summer 2017

—for J.A.
1
Wheat horizons taper to roads

as rice to mountains hugs runoff.
The zabuton is just a pillow to sit on,

nothingness just the Eucharist unplugged.
I saw the boy slinking first

and the board was on it.
May his face shine upon you

so of course they smile.
Sitting is to be practiced for hours.

Hours. No quickies like the rosé takes its time.
The lotus does not its thing

leaving broken heaps in the public pond: 
Let them ride a bit higher. We’re all bigger for it.

You know. Well she was thinking it.
Let the hope of it sudsing smudge the drag-a-little-bit-lower

along the let-them-have-it-their-way-or-no-way devices—
without which who knows? Recall a grandpa voice

dipping up and about for a wee hand up eh?
Friendliness passing through smothered in caramel.

Grab the bar at the back of the bike, not me.
Marriage lasts lifetimes of untimeliness

set up, more if you think it might pan out.
2
The wind refused to duck down and waves got off in flurries. They blessed and blamed

people, you and I, forgetting to leave the magnetic key on the counter on the way out.
It brings the homeland sensitivity on. Not pretty. Mr. and Ms. barely-high-in-perpetuity

bis principal de Peter par référence.
Who kids you-who? I mean,

wipe   that   off   this   in-side trailing standstill.
Several decades ago these ponytail blonds in slippers

took to no one. No one knocks and no one answers.
The hollow in the details and every turn.

Then letting the high wall climb in dividing me 
and this or that other until the outfit disarmed

and bizarre incongruity turned to routine.
It’s a ride and smile that spurs oxen to scratch

in gusts, joy above stories, nudges, 
an itch untouchable with respect to our ineffable cover.

The hand dresses wounds not to wake dormers and giggling rafters.
3
I have no right to dig up baggage for anyone,

least among whom would be me.
Musically a mind to let it out on me

for not hearing it my way, that love 
it or find it weekends no worse, enough

at a loss, I mean, we’re all here, fingers,
so where is only a matter of branding, tarnishing

it imprints on us through its dig.
“Hey” I hear me saying, leaving the nonplussed

restroom smile off my face
the hey flattens still, but “how’s it going” picks up

motion, kinesthetic stop tower in the rainy season.
Deserts hold not a dandelion to it,

into the weak long sun of the northern summer.