Preamble

Childless, I am in a house on the ocean-edge

of a national park. Nights, I consider broadcast horrors. This is not

my house. I am a stranger, a newcomer. So often, too,

is the horror. Passes time. Passes time. Past time lights

up my liturgical tendencies, illumines past time, my lovelies.

Here, in this room, in this house, the light is sometimey as always.

Clouds. Wind and all. Pronounced through windows onto woods, onto lawns.

Say “Light casts its tender hieroglyphs on the mundane

and cataclysmic equally,” and fancify a nothing, go straight

for an inaccuracy that distracts and passes time.

And light comes before the hieroglyph, and (as marker)

these hieroglyphs give meager insight into the “nature” of light beyond

some minor perceptions. And what? Shall I ride the alliterative waves

of articulation and silence that fog my mouth and mind? Or just let

the words like particles roll? See where and what this accrual of syllables gets us?

It’s midday, and you are both years before the you to whom this poem

whispers, before the women with whom these syllables conspire. Lullaby, loves,

this ain’t. I have become a woman who screams softly. Maybe an over-abundance

of caution? Of caustic care? Well, I’ve seen the clips and memes, heard the murmurs

and corporate decisions meant to mark-up and mock the nature of you that’s well beyond

easy perception. In past times,

I’ve been medicated out of my self, locked under

an atmospheric feeling, the condition of which would not relent, which could will “will not”

to relent. Wheels of wheeling won’t re-

lent. Absolve your self sunken between

Breath breath breathe                and the toxic dirt.