The Elephants

Contain

Those concatenated
husks of ice
that line the lawn’s
edge, far-
lapping shadows
(narrow, as if
scratched into
week-old
snow’s scum-
pocked surface).
Give the day
its sign, some
emblem, to
read our-
selves out
of past
into place. No
world without
delineation. No
thing until
detonated
into its word.
Carpenter ant
navigates a knot
on an elm stump
and vanishes
through a cavity
of rot. Sight
is lost to sight.
At the border
between seasons
air’s grainy with
light’s lengthening.
Listen to an hour
shift shape, how
it contains
sonic detritus
in a dream-thin
frame, slush
spun under tires,
a church bell’s
high note
bent above
dusk folding
the corners in.

---

Vermonter

fence along the tracks
fenced in with overgrowth

as long
as the light
itself


+


white moth spins
over bricks

washed
with new graffiti


+

as afterimage
what sticks
to the inner eye

abandoned warehouse windows’

bare bulbs graze