I

Tulips sound the husky yard, trumpet soft as leaf-mess //

moss on compost.
About the goat track, huts in back-lit noon, docked about

the trees like schooners
on an in-bloom swell. Once honed, these complexities might

enter the world, might funnel, spiral’d down

upon the masculine city, might round his edges.

Water over glass.
II

The South will come here in fresh-air cars, gush

spills in gash-lakes, caked as amber

where there was none // will canter ruts of lane and gorge

and speak gorse-tongue.
These gloveless hours before your shares

are read, before your language

is a dead-sea language  (dries the lips bit-cut as coins

in cart tracks) what chess

is not a salivating

game?
III

The world can be closing

in around you, doors like department-store tinsel
my friend, but you will emerge from this business

immersed in it’s strands.