FROM SUPPLE((ELE|MENTAL))


The last haggard
rag of daylight
persists long
enough for songs
to finish, even
if only a fade.
You hope again
this is just
a bad picture
show: me
in a rolled-up stone,
a cornered
cottonmouth, how dusk
pinches pines
together & never
enough city to
stretch your tongue
over. A used condom
on the path,
glass, a stop
sign fallen. A tent
in the woods
by the tracks.

How many people
wonder like
you do how
to love this day
as much as
the earth
is persistent
in its rolling?
How many things
can be
named &
destroyed until
either names
cease to
exist or,
waxing,
names – wax,
moccasin, daylight,
path, rodeo –
are so embodied
by their beings
that no one dare
strip their one
sacred language?
Or the killers
continue, too
nameless or
named I
cannot tell.
How to find
this day's
hungry mouth
& shut it.