Sketch of a poem ending with lines by Robert Duncan

by Stephen Collis

            tuning
this stray moment
                rainy day

      locked round roots

             flooding from moon and stars
                                                  continuous stream

             chthonic

                            cemetery walk dreaming

                                               animals

          in and out of shadows

             along the edge of wood
                        or down through valley

           holes carved revealing cold constellations
                       arrows that are arias (areas) of light

shot through to the breathing blood
            the music
                                   run through to bone

            in arteries / images

it contains in itself all the middles of things

                        and we drink from a fountain of fire

            as there only is soil
                       because living things have died

anima
              animals
inhabiting our arteries

I touch you shaking
            fist of hair / animal smell
                        you open your

hand a light there
              heat / you say
                        it’s the first real idea anyone ever had

    word / image
             tool to dig with what I ask
                       harmony you say / biting my shoulder

                                  you never sleep in the same self twice
and who says what communicates
                        through feedback of changes

in the alley light fixtures
            smashed a
                       tattered Aeschylus falling out the open window

tissue within tissue
           sum total of animals for the holocaust
                      bulls rams lambs and kids

      are numbers
           what about a white shebear?
                           repeating itself in incessant circles which aren’t circles
           the difference which is used as a new input

many of us camped along the shore
                                   the water’s own pulses

                                   yes / we are poets / but it’s not our fault

             compost or

I sensed I must work not with my abilities
            but with my inabilities not with what I clearly thought
                        but with what I could not think clearly

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