Sea-infested the day starts. I don’t know what to do about it
Winter, not unlike a large airfield, has moved its early shadows hereward
Where daylight and its galleons roam like giant birds across the pavement
An immigrant space, shaped by sleep, reminds me of afternoon

What is to come is coming; the dark distance left over after the moon and its great ignitions have gone
Row upon row, memories waived by Time and its careless polaroidal calendar
You have gone too. Your mother’s. Only an hour or so away. I look for value in the trappings
Of the day. I count the crows that lean over their power lines, think about how rich the sky is
Its discolored blues, practicing over and over to remember the size of work, and the time it takes
To get There

I see the leaves out the back window; Sycamore, Swedish Elm, Dutch Oak. Imagine how green
They have to be for the birds to know when to sing their sunthickened notes
And then the railroad horn blows, warning its cubid herds that it is time to go home
I listen closely for you, and that is when I hear the longboats barging
Through the heartland, lost among fields of grain dark as the sea
A track of electro-magnetic waves going off into the distance like an alarm in my sleep
My dreams too clumsy to hold you up to the light


© 2004 by Gregory Clark. All rights reserved.