Blinds
To listen
is to see
when the light
is a thing
felt in the ear —
it rings
you awake.
~
A dream's jagged
remains, what
morning absorbs.
Light, only light,
in place of nothing
left to remember.
~
Cliff face
shaded in
April snow
that fell
for an hour
overnight.
~
Off the highway
a stand of birch slants
above a vernal pool.
Sight slows to hold
flaked white
raked through
a stretched wreck of landscape.
~
A tree as thin
as your wrist
sprays
from the split
in a river rock.
~
A flag's reflection
dents the
water,
blurs
the debris,
mostly leaves.
~
When shadow
ingests shadow
and road clatter
thins into crickets.
When the notebook's
margins are lost
and language
sprawls. When
windows turn
brown, vacant
in their glare.
~
I return
to my body
attached to
a long vowel
stretched
between us.
________________
Joseph Massey
A New Silence
Shearsman Books
2019
