It doesn’t matter

And it can’t be done.
The way a wave

Won’t outlast the sun.
You see a word once

Then it’s gone again
Like wet paint drying on

A wall to be knocked down.
The songs are flashing

In a pond like signs, fish
Half-asleep until the ice

Is broken off.
It isn’t wrong to cough

When the big guns sing.
I had a vocation,

It had begun.
It lasted two weeks,

A vacation more than anything.
It gave great pleasure

To the lofty mice.
My silent words, O Lord, to you

Were offerings
Of sugar and spice.

By morning the platter
Was licked clean and bare

By vermin who had fed
On my adoration.

It had been bent and soft
Before then, then hard and coarse.

For once you care,
Care can’t be taken anymore.

You’re sent off course.
What goes is gone, what goes ahead

Is just enough to stay a hand
From making bad things worse,

Or worse, bedding things best left unsaid.
Undone is what all sheets were once,

On that occasion when they bled.
What lost its purpose

Was the poise. To clear
My heart my throat makes noise.

Above the ceremony
Good birds take wing

And in their leaving notify
The ground that soaring brings

A distance to be mastery,
In the new conjoining

Of thought and thing.
It wasn’t clearly meant

To be just above,
Which is why love always

Lies down in the end.