From the Book of Flux

By Richard Ryal

though the dead go gray fast, they bring new green
and anyone who lives into the years of sturdy aches
and grays will agree, time travels at its own choice of speeds,
the falling man and the watching children
live in an acceleration the other bystanders can’t feel

a convocation of erasers in reach, I purge old lists
written on a map, rub the sheet into a linen pelt,
into the half–awake beach we found on this map
on that trip among the weeds that cracked the road

my other old map, obscured by lists and circles,
has birthed a rose window of complexity
from countless angles of folds, my eraser feathers the paper
into the disarray of meadow grass

The Book of Flux is certain, death keeps health
from strangling on the day’s trailing vines,
rolls up the road behind us so we don’t carry
more than allows us to dance

we need a new species of vehicles to lift us
where we need to go instead of our intended harbors,
our mistakes at last a virtue, each a boost in the tide,
the certainty of being more than we thought

I don’t want evening whiskey anymore, only its elation
like when it was a new pleasure,
rousing the drowsy bright in my veins, my comforts
soothe me with reliable restraint but
danger is its own delicious pleasure just as every
contradiction makes sense at the time
when succumbing to temptation is certain