w.s.
Oi Piero
UNTITLED
I watch the argument of an afternoon
in the way light pauses on the tips
of grass, skips at the open eye of my door
and glazes this bowl of cold milk. Inside
the busy letters of a book
the argument goes on in the caged
clarity of
o's
and
a's,
the outreaching
solitude of
h's, b's, d's,
prairie spaces
where meanings of the world melt away
into primitive gouges, loops, and slithers.
To read in the scrawl of the gone present
the brute longevities of past.
My moment in the afternoon is a poor home
for plenty. Most of all it houses
the noontide demon of hours licking
oblivion, slurping muddy water,
to
remit
the tedium of staring too long at oneself.
I watch my hand asleep in the highnoon light;
the moment its apartness takes shape
it suddenly becomes new to me, a song I've never
really sung. The light that argues it back to me
clamors into every object. Why do I care
if waxy repetition is the bottom of all speech?
Who spills real boring light into real words?
