5
“poetry is a holiday of the mind...The poet’s brain is a sea bottom on which many hulls repose....”
---Valery
The naive conceit, a deer and her fawn
in early morning, watchful, “on alert”
a dream? Thinking they are unobserved,
they bed down in the mulch, leaves
flickering between light and shadow.
To wander from room to room, so quiet,
a hair descends, steps creak, finger tips
heat or sitting errant, a little inscrutable
world in pinprick and collision.
This shelter of neglect and decades long
delay, whiskered white repairs fall from
the sky and exit or enter. The poor light
up the island, whispering the “truth”
about “lonesome” Jim, the tortoise who ignored
his companion for ten years before
attempting to mate with her again.
Then he died. A black bird catches a worm
it can not eat all at once. Feigned affection
bounces right off me shining the x-ray
beam on the paint chips in Van Gogh’s beard
( which may have staved off his madness)
and the fidget tips of sea goggles and snorkel
gear then with a whoosh and a splash
I was in the water. Slowly I began to adjust
the gear to my head settings and then it
clicked like when the right word comes along.