not to ennoble, but to praise

decay and flight

All Hallows by Louise Glück

Even now this landscape is assembling.

The hills darken. The oxen

sleep in their blue yoke,

the fields having been

picked clean, the sheaves

bound evenly and piled at the roadside

among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness

of harvest or pestilence.

And the wife leaning out the window

with her hand extended, as in payment,

and the seeds

distinct, gold, calling

Come here

Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

no exit, a head down approach to the existential crisis

power, a matter of perspective

something metaphysical in the roots

up the logging road someone has preempted a fall,
laid his own mechanical weight and burst the ballast,
lulled the lumber in reverse, timbered the timber.
it's all only a matter of time, they say,
time for the soil to snatch the seed from the scat,
time for the life force to buck and break the bract,
time for the wood to reproduce, careening with cellular force,
veneer methodically ironing itself out,
or like an alien philosophy might slowly overtake its host,
a decaying and susceptible well-primed nation—

hate to see something like that fall on its own.

the distance between trees

gleaning ii

inner structure, the world recalls kazuo nakamura

evening, blue reflection, the world recalls kazuo nakamura

the distance of a single road, a gentle ratio