The dry-bouquet tomorrow
will lock and dwarf this river.
Its cabin of rust and thrush.
Banal flowers will blossom.
Seeds will sour and quicken
thick from hilltop towpath:
the crazed patch, the lime wall,
the roofless pavillion sky while
we return to gradual collapse,
ruined with breath. The City
has us. Dissolved and dissolving,
the haze ushers peach smoke
through summer’s purring fridge
like someone choking on ice
in the throat. Yet underneath,
in bundled shawl’s furniture,
blue-future legs twaddle on.
Looking through the damp hall,
I am alone. My cabonated eyes
and white words dwell within.
A feverview. A friend’s guitar,
which is mine; a bleak, steamless
irony chilled among forty ribs
that are made for the rest of us.
Snow banks of amber inch
that remorseless fall; friends
who’ll rue the block covering
uncorked hands to break
the perfumed glass, clenching
and unclenching the fence.
Life has lured us here. A glancing
lariat that remains someone else’s.
Dawn was tepid, high-heeled, mull-
ing its preface, a heated threshold
too full with a vacuum of dreams.
Some uncited clouds, then thuds.
Festooning and able at least to rise,
to stay upright, we move away.
We reach up whole, thus passing,
at last thorough through morning.
JUNE 2007