Credit It

Parts of language lack
Correlates within
The non-linguistic

World—that’s all we mean
When we say something
Is unreal, untrue.

There’s a word for it,
Or an expression
That details something

We can imagine
By reassembling
Memory crumbles,

But that we can’t find
When we look outside
Our names. That’s a lie.

Would-Be Bog Words

Mere words can’t give
Impersonal
Accounts of life’s
Affairs in hand,

Just our accounts
Of somebody’s
Impressions made
Of their living.

We come closest
By standing off
From the events,
But even then

We have to sense
Inside one skull’s
Overnight inn
What’s in the fens.

Late in the Season

How would you open a book
Once you’ve opened, filled, and closed
Far too many half-wit books

In your own, peculiar voice
Compounded of the banal,
The discursive, and the snide?

You shouldn’t open at all.
And yet, you can’t help yourself.
You open the way leaves fall.