69


It's a bit like when you point at something
that you want a dog to notice, and the dog
just looks at your finger.


here in the U.K. they're knitting poems
                           to celebrate the centenary
                                       of the Poetry Society
        & shrews make little partings in the grass
    before owls pounce & plummet upwards
      to perch in the branches of dead elms
           among forgotten constellations
   I remember when we met in west Vienna
                I had skate
        you had the dark Russian sole
we talked about the inabilities of silence
   to express immensity or domicile
the separate subclumps of the Virgo Cluster
the need to scratch at the skin
   of some tambourine till blood peeps out
the motto of the mollusc: what is
   human about humans may be logos
    but life remains the slow construction of a home
           in unspeakable tide & hunger





Norfolk        September 2009