A boy on a horse,
a boy on a horse along a river.
Less simple—time intervenes thievish.
A boy on a horse in the rain along a river.
A picture emerges from mist—faint rain
hiding the regnant risk, arrowing rain,
boy lost on a horse in the rain along a river,
a high bluff beside water. Story:
the bit firm in the horse’s mouth
the hand of the boy unfirm.
What we played we played, dangerous
only in retrospect.
If it can be remembered
it was survived,
the era of imagined
horses in radiant landscape;
only the rivers remain.

What does it matter—material as in
paper, scissors, rock? Matter of fact,
res facti, not matter of law; res judicata;
mater, wood, in the woods, mother; a
child draws a box, triangle, chimney,
door of paper. A poem a product
suitable for interior use—hollow,
with corrugated support; or a
writing on paper from some wasp’s nest

A game is played to determine matters
beyond law, beneath it: paper covers rock.
Words for “write” in most languages
have a violent origin—cut, scratch,
incise. A few were painterly. To write
in water. To write in sand. To make
a house of paper, a floating.
Writan, to tear, as paper, skin, cloth.

We wrote of the facefulls of wind
which would gnaw

the space
which wind fills readily again

space is not place but
is the possibility:

a twig in the sand then
crayon on rough paper

later with blue school ink
through a Parker medium nib

on lined paper I drew rockets
clipper ships, small whales

and large dogs smiling. And
windows against wind

the wind a group of lines leaning
against trees. A shape of trees.

wings of angels rustle in Latin
says Zbigniew Herbert

I recall so little (amo amas
amat) the little so broken I
sauntered soundless
down paths in the park

I heard a policeman speak
in fragments from above

from a helicopter I understood
little

less than Latin

rotors and engines and roaring traffic
a soup of grammars and syntax

Angel is an ancient word for
Entropy which word was invented
in 1868 by Clausius

I mean the turning inward
downward
demanded by police

Energy is another word another
world at night a bird

probably mockingbird

keeps awake
the weary

means nothing by it
“Means”
“Nothing”

entropia, turning inward
an older word

than the French for Cajun
acadienne but

perspective was invented by Vitruvius
then was not needed until
the invention of the railroad in 1789
by William Jessup who
invented the wheel
or a flanged version of it
to hang onto an iron rail

I learned from a book there are
trees beneath earth

Geoxylic suffrutices
forests sunk

trunks underground
and the merest wisp
of leaves left visible

within earth beneath fire
beneath breath of man or cosmos
immortal wooden wilderness.

as in purpose; the purple of the hillside
enrolled me in its misery, mysterious mist
emanating.

             When it was over the day
descended in the form of a star, ours,
which is to say the dark returned

which is to say a measure of darkness inter
posed between and among the sources
the lights twinkling against a moon.

This was a landscape longed for, lost.
Long as a verb—to increase in length
of days, of nights, of neither.

Still the purple stain, floral embellishment,
ingrains itself, inhabits banished gardens.