Untitled

Our desires deceive us.

But what doesn’t?

Sightlines curve

in a curving space.

Grief and euphoria

overamplify or damp.

Memory is a cereal box

label, ingredients—

1. Processed Sugar — sorted

by volume (contents measured

by weight).

Logic is a long lever

but one’s footing

is the only ground to stand.

Imagination feeds us back

our own salty hearts

till we are full and dead.

and

I’ve found faith

is an ancient map

showing us countries

misshaped, renamed, or

never been.

A surveyor can’t work through earthquakes.

yes,

Love alone, but love of what

or who—

and why? Else add

a broken compass,

spinning needle, to the straw

heaping quaintly.

We are lost

in a forest of losses,

all phantom trees, phantom shadows,

the leaves our lackings,

the lackings our only glimpse of sky,

(continued, no stanza break)

nimbus gray,

never closer for our wandering.

yet

The conscience still whistles its simple surf;

the eye of the ear pains

at the broken chord;

what hurts most

is most often where to start.

you

Must do the thing you cannot do,

e. roosevelt

said; did she mean

through

Is the only way through,

virtue the only vessel

to take to sea—

where we may wreck

or starve

and find a watery grave, an airy casket,

yet

May not

and find a new world?

away

From this

untitled land

the only direction

we know for sure.

god

Save the queen; god

Save the queen’s people.