In my fever, I wrote along the margins
unknow the dying sea and in high winds
the will & testament I’d been preparing,
unconsciously, went flying behind the barracks.
Most of its sentences I found easily
but some had ingested the thorn,
and a few like this one I never found again.
Stranger, let’s be one another
in magnified senses one a blue fragment,
the prize just some long hair behind us
or be one absence together stown away
and let us become the periphery of what we said
knowing was, before I thought the piano
upright against the yellow wall brought forth
a figure in the mind consonant with part
of the universe has that striking fuzz
and periphery, mammal or fledgling gentle
or a question so dense it can knock seven times
secret tones from wire’s worn suspense
but it is the piano’s hammer
shaped like a teardrop (it is a teardrop)
or flame (it is a flame).
from Poetry Northwest WEBMore by Ed Skoog from the library
Copyright © Ed Skoog
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.