without pure evil in the world,
there was no east or west, no polestar
and no ratifying dove. I sat inside
the small white house for hours,
deaf to the world, playing my two songs,
one in a major, the other in a sad, minor key.
Steven Cramer
FOR NOW
This morning letting the trees stand
over the unappeasable man I've become,
I'm loitering in an unused backyard plot,
afraid a neighbor might lift up a shade
and recognize me and remain unmoved,
certain I've let my nature grow
brittle and veined, skin of a leaf
stretched over a stone, the muddy reek
of last night's rain drying, and the air
inside me dusty as the air inside a tent;
and feeling ridiculous and skittish
with this mortal look on my face,
I rub my thumb across the bark,
follow the limbs that divide and turn
invisible, each pointing out a new ambiguity
the longer I look; and I look to my windows,
three black boxes housing my absence now,
and above them the late-August sky, white
as water churned by someone's hand; then out
through a weedy gap in the wire fence,
a teenage couple shortcuts from nowhere
to nowhere, stops - the girl touching
the boy's shoulder, lightly, for balance,
shaking a stone or twig from her shoe,
