b

For a summons, there's a cove, and on
The tides in flow the failures-- crumples in a cardboard eternity--
The jobs I didn't get, multiplied by everyone getting to the same
Place, not everyone getting what they need,
But still giving according to their ability. Then
There were jobs lost on opportunities
I didn't know I was being given-- where I was off
On some bridge holding a book in my hand-- that part
Of an effort to be me and how to think they
Were a good sign-- someone else's advice (who else)
Ends a poem with advice scarcely taken.
Call it advice never given, dripping from above,
Taking millennia to get there & cave through, & still
Almost silent, while the stream just dances on,
Saying simply be the answer to everything they want.

10-i-2022

a

The days of jealousy piled high in the off season,
Blocking the lustre of the grandfather clock's face,
Able to spring there as it had long stopped,
Ever since the party, after finals, where a guest--
Noone could recall who invited them-- had stumbled,
Clattering into the clock. Its mechanism
Was mericfullly intact, but had stopped moving.
The chalet owner refused to get it repaired,
No guest staying long enough to sweep it away,
The dust becoming its own appeal, a new time
Where traces don't even linger, & domestic space scarcely
Opens out enough to make the shifting, the welcome
Of passages of air, the synchronisation of breeze
With the contours of a house needed to keep it clear,

Clattering into the snow. Pale corners gave up,
& the notice was passed on. Call it destiny
For lack of inclination to sit out the stream,
Wasting the silent lines' tension in the easier releases.
Would the foster home have called, was the refrain
She unsettled, only now to summon older stories,
The ones that crept up waiting for a reply, before
That too was cornered in the general appropriation of blossom,
From plant life to sketchbooks to animated projects,
The summer pouring over scrolls.

4-i-2022