ONE KIND OF POETICS

To know a tree’s remembered life,

or where a pebble’s been, impossible.

We probe water’s motions

but cannot touch its core.

Clouds pass—we strain

to guess their intention, but none

confess the secrets of the sky.

This may resemble poetry,

words like fallen rain

rushing from the untamed

to the untamed. Love,

once uttered, forfeits its pure source.

Meaning, pursued, may leave only curdled fog.

No hand, no eye quick or deft

enough to seize whole truth.

Each perfection hides its black void.

I can’t describe the void’s dark lure.

A silence, a larger sacrifice

light can’t explain. Giddy

from this shore to the next, ferried free.

All gifted fingers addicted:

the sheen of sedimentary stone.

Staring toward darkness.

The feather shamed by aimless drift

slips through rusted chain.

Even now, I can’t see where it’s going.