The fencepost's shadow leaps out across the plain
Like the bejeezus
Out of someone.
The mirage becomes an oasis
Is something it might have said.
The first stars creep forward
Like wild children coaxed from the woods.
Love, then, was just a sweeter loneliness
Than this,
Though snowbroken aspen across the meadow
Still catch the latest light like a grove
Of saxaphones,
Like you said,
Temporary, like eternity,
Though once,
And once again,
Daylight held us on the tip of its tongue
And forgot what it was saying.
William Harmon
PROSE POEM
Use your imagination, your head,
oatmeal box, that comely cylinder, words
won't help although they want to,
rare earths, my dear, are neither rare-nor earths,
as for this Jerusalem artichoke
in the inalienable shade of the tulip poplar,
well, all I can say is well, I love
the way they hold these truths, as
box holds oatmeal, molar amalgam,
the five great stanzas hold their heads high
in whatever it is history is, lifted
