Flap

A long wing stretches
Across the whole sky.
Clearly, we’re dealing
With reality.

The wing’s not attached
To any biped,
Furrred or feathery,
But it has feathers,

Tilting between white
And a darkish grey.
It bends, gathering
For a stroke, wingbeat.

Why does everything
In realism
Have to be like this
Wing covering things?

The Finish

There’s still some anxiety
To being caught by sunset,
Even in a peaceful place,

Even with good equipment
For traveling through the dark.
The diurnal mind recalls

How ancestors were winnowed,
How anxiety evolved.
This could all get difficult.

This could all get dangerous.
One hopes for kindly spirits
Or addresses some savior,

Or just tries to stay alert.
If these woods swallow the sun
Before you’re all done, you’re done.

Eidetic

There was a little more snow then.
It shows clearly, in the picture.
Otherwise this all looks the same,

As if someone walked up behind
A tattered portrait of themselves
Aligning faces carefully,

The breathing person congruent
With the torn representation.
Living presence fills the details

That the memory had let slip.
Yes, that was how your eyes looked then,
Dark over sun-struck sandstone cheeks.

There was no single incident.
You’ve come back again and again.

Beach Reading

The phrases surface,
Entangled or free.
Rake up what you can

Out of the breakers.
A signed pun might take
A little hand flip.

A whistled one might
Juxtapose two tunes.
It is good and calm

To rearrange names
As you take them in.
You can make your own

Beachcomber’s palace
From the wreck and wrack
The ocean provides.

Elegant False Exits

A little calm, incomplete.
Shreds of paper dust the floor.
The oven clicks as it bakes.

If it makes sense, if it is
Detailed in the present tense,
If nothing wondrous occurs,

It could be a kind of poem.
Cats prowl a kitchen cupboard
Sitting carelessly ajar.

Fine new Oxford editions
Don’t exist. Wind hauls on doors.
But if it doesn’t make sense,

What are you doing here? What
Plant sprung the tongued pitfall trap?