Circ Notices His Own Turning

light's rapacity present
at the gloaming and
shadow of a lawn chair
stretched out on the wild grass;
sky's vivid,
not imitating but alluding
to the surgical whiteness
that screams "not yet"
at first quarter-turn
of REM cycle,
like a ripping and a means.

warm's nothingness gone,
lifted like the morning fog
(they both clear out at sunrise)
and playing instead is her

leaning forward
in the adirondack chair
swilling the blood from her mouth
with warm sprite,
it pooling on the cement
between turned-in feet, thickly
and with the new color;
her head clicks one degree
too far left,
bone-pivot's ballet, and weakly saying
"darling,"
eyes half closed; still half asleep
well this takes you back,
all the way to 

junipercherrytree.
autumn's here.

you think of fatherhood
in a skeletal way,
with a slight turning of the hour hand,
or a decorative paper bird's wing,
over six feet of roman numeral,
emphasizing, intensely,
your post-womb
string of bad luck,
which you have
convinced yourself
exists solely--either by
means of fate or by
God-hand--to sharpen your
lament into something beautiful
and relevant
and somehow important;

because what kind of
place would the world truly be
to you without this glowing evening
that drives the blackbirds
away from the pale earth
and into its own fugue,
just as all life
has come to cower at your touch.

Reviews

[Alysa Salzberg]

I like the rhythm here. And there are of course some incredible lines. My favorite part: "you think of fatherhood/in a skeletal way,/with a slight turning of the hour hand,/or a decorative paper bird's wing,"

As with so many great poems, there's so much more happening here than what appears. I'll come back and savor this again, and ponder over it.