Chapter 1

WHISPERS

DARKENING GREEN

My mind, rarely with me alone, parts with energy, the floor boards scuffed and landing beams just roosts big enough for pigeons on leave from fields darker for their grain. 19 *************************************************************** WHISPERS

Suppose and this is just supposing, though it is a supposition of the highest order, I were to die tomorrow

A roar denoting silence? At work, if tradition is the dictate, something eulogistic would find itself being said.

I am more calm. I perceive their layers more shrilly. Past the lipservice and shocked surprise, whispers, rumours and the grapevine would bruit around a different legacy.

And the open bier? An embrassassment. What more could be left unsaid? 20 *************************************************************** TRESPASS

I would imagine the eyelids fail, fall closed, shut, as icicles sit on porch doors where old nails rust. 21 *************************************************************** FOREST SPITTLE

The preciseness of that little moment, bowler eyes in hot, top rays effervescent through spongy forest gloom, the wet of the happy unreconciled with the dry outside. 22 *************************************************************** SEAGULLS I see many thoughts from a window. Seagulls in the fashion of summer and leaves as they quit the year. Sense impressions, if they are this, are only images of what we refuse to follow. 23 *************************************************************** LA DOUCE MER

Too greedy hormonal levels, savouring drives and swooned walrus tusks behind the deep belly of tireless sea, propel ocean crates looser for their water than blood to devour cavernous shores, swilling miniature inland sweet water seas that father Champlain called douce mer lakes; dubbing there a blow for courage. 24 *************************************************************** GOURDS A cemetery overgrown such that each tombstone is a pauper fungus crowded, dark with leaves, or hollow gourds hideous, in a forest sleep. 25 *************************************************************** RESIGNATION

Petals that fall into a woodland pool are servers at a banquet. Each one dresses for the occasion like an employee with regrets, that leaves the house in a somber mood the morning after his resignation. 26 *************************************************************** THE BREATH OF CANDLES

The breath of candles, hot and murky, on the still air.

Giant factories wave wands in luxury; contaminate roving commuter bands brown, from dirt knitted through white bread hair. 27 *************************************************************** GREEN EYE SHIELDS

I have stars drying in my eyes. Heavy seas, in wind. They have sealed me from the heavy dragging sockets, otherwise my green eye shields.

I have scars all over my eyes, to bear the horrible imaginings that try to come through.

The horror of being alive. The crusty scenes that pry into trees glide down, touch me, a glitter of awful gold steals me, in its triumph of glow. 28 *************************************************************** INVESTITURE

Our nights have cruel eyes And have cast us about too thinly, Fallen upon us, Divested the attention of the wind.

Night comes to develop us, Will polish our minds with A precision lasting 'til daybreak. Its damp coolness peaks with wretched effect.

Autumnal decay Whereby the slow process of vegetation Displeases the nostril, Is but a preamble to greater violence Leading tepid legislation in an orchestra Toward greater effect.

The thin harmony of our lives Positions no alarms whereby We might use them.

The fabric mixture of existence, nothing but investiture, Props to heighten necessary lies, Strains at extinction, The volcanic instrument life itself.

Goals are these same vehicles To operate weak desires. Frustration defeats a goal That will not fit. 29 *************************************************************** THE SPOKEN WORD I touch your face - where strands of whispery hair dangle your thoughtful gaze through mine.

Clutching, all the words not said lie pale and broken beneath forgery lies.

Eyes, our facial minnows, the mirror images, flash too brightly out of the shallows, out of their stony commitments towards believing we cannot agree. 30 ***************************************************************