The Meaningful World

 
Is a birth in blanket darkness, a discordant
wind furiously mingling warcry, a hovel exposed
to gravel roads that parallel and then break
from highway impertinence, a train at three
and for an hour; is green upon copper, the spar-
king repulse of jumper cables, the refrozen
slate of mid-December, the plus and the equal to,
a perpetual carry-over of symbol, signal and low-
level warning; is the stench and bath of leather,
the rip and bagging of feather, the locked door,
the garlic bulb, a lessening of ash from fire;
is the hunger told by cricket, an incantation
nearly believed, rocksalt, apples, sundry notes
for a latterday dream; is the myth of hospitable
planets, the overflowed coliseum, wood rounded
by a rain of feet, trembling glasses elegant
before struck tines; is a found tooth proffered
as amulet and charm, a white dog, mother's teat,
a missing card, a pointillist jot jolting
awareness, a petri dish ajar; is callow with its
persistent amnesia, an arsonist at heart.

I lift my glass; I cautiously upend my drink.
Likewise, the glass upends me. I lift my glass
and set it down. The tea has cooled conception.
All this space, weighted by constellation;
all this weight, Brownian desiderata, feral
as it is fertile: stem begetting stem begotten
fervent lustration; foundless tepid pyres.

What agony, that does not cease this dream?
What dream, that persists upon waking?
What drunken lucidity; what love better lost
than one undeservedly found. Salmon sky,
starved cicada--.