—one finger chiromantic exercise—

It sums our vital force and our will.
Cowards had theirs sliced and in Sparta

Hug me, mother of noise. 
Find me a hiding place. 
I am afraid of my voice. 

The season of the cut and clear. The bales squared
in the distance, a hollow house, no windows or doors.
The Ns of the fence posts, perforated shadows.

Sweet runs the water ever
out of spring and meadow,
frothing low, rising,

a homely word:
a plosive, a long cry, a quiet stop, a silent letter
          like a storm and the end of a storm,

                I want to tell you, it has nothing to do with trees or luck, that the last carnations crumbling in the gutter, the float stripped down by the rain, even the drum major and the fireman, lifting their beers to the moon, are part of some other show, some other season, which the barkers have never known.

        as he drew the silhouettes

against the vast

         machinery, suspending them,

Riding in the wake
of your electric shock,
I was your therapy.

The sun has pulled
the dew from the grass,
leaving the roots warm, humid, soft.

As I sat on the toilet
of a Boeing 727,
somewhere over Ohio