Paddles sloshing in tunnel.

Volume: all thumbs.

Dis-ser-vice? Naaa...

For him it is always a Shabbat
of words. Fire is forbidden:
even the memory of ashes.

The air is measurable. Clocks
bell, publishing hour on hour
each other’s truth, one two, three four:

Gunnery practise dubs the Judean hills.
Anna Ticho stopped painting for many years.
Her eyes a still small voice, eroded

My voice bends over your neck.
There, to the small of the back
mouth mutes its touch.

I do not make phone calls, talk to anyone,
      let alone write. Even this letter
is mailed reluctantly. I move without cause,

I have no new myths for fat, yellow colunins
and a discarded Baedeker at the Drake.
The stories I fall upon are old and distant,

As your eyes are blue
you move me—& the thought of you—
I imitate you.

I woke up thinking abouy my brothr’s body. 
That q That was my first bit of early morning typing 
So the first dignity, it turns out, is to get the spelling right.

of the lowercase, of indian pipes,
a locket of thumbnail photographs
that opens across the room,