The Target of an Attention

the target of an attention


if he throws you against the wall will you stick
or how the belly of a carcass reveals
the target of an attention
that cannot be
gauged

walk into a room
where will you breathe
your last: will your skin shrink
will the curtains loosen in their weave
or how a wasp burns along its central nerve & falls

& did you record those observations
made again & again to friends in
pain as if life were a judicial
application of collected
aphorisms: li’l engine

& how we fold her
hands in yours
that fire is
still a
fire

the spit of
being neither
the father’s son
nor not the father’s son
to crawl with your own sorrow

& who pours soft waters
on your stony head
a pale green twig
quivering thru
another time;

mud of a god unmolded

* * *

speak plainly: she weeps for a love unfaithful
weeps that he may never see the madness
that runs & runs & runs in him
that he may be a broken
vessel she cannot fill
or one that needs
another’s glue

is she greedy
wanting to
be his only
angel & how she
fears he will not be fixed
fixed: unchanging & yet the ghost
we fear is our own absence: the presence

of a thing that will be fixed in its
place even as we unanchor
float as nothing more
than a notion a
ghost some
thing not
a thing

but a metaphor
in a philosopher’s
cave & the dry whisper
a river bereft of
its mountain
a light of
clouds;

the presence of our absence: coniunctio

* * *

or laughing
carries in her hands
what her eyes cannot

as if a soul needed
weight a light
entangled

how she covers
her face &
in those

palms
where nothing
is seen he sees what

beauty cups fierce
enough to guard
the heavens

how if she
reveals
one

turn of her
sorrow
what

green leaf
distance
rains

folding
warm
open

lips
parting
to belong;

her skin like a field of hidden clouds

* * *

A the words
A or B
hurry

between lines
like clothes
wet & dry

how far between
the press &
the push

at the fold pull
the pin open
& a basket

already empty
lonely as
a sky

her hands
linger
red;

unknown the sky so fierce in the plains

* * *

or how Isabel said
let the world
know itself
without
saying

imagine it
a jumped place
all that is not touched
the unmapped & unseen
completing us by its absence

or how we feed certain wood to fire
& others hew polish & carve
imbue with a longing of
what any cage
would free

invisible fires
invisible smoke
his hand in the sea
she touches his mouth
& clouds begin in leaving

& stick scratches black sand
monk strikes a brass bowl
sharp clattering of wings
her face toward heaven
feathers on a mirror;

mirror face sky


Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry