What the World Is All About

Sun in the midst, and a few rooftops
in the foreground. The fall hills.

Standing in the foyer stirring my coffee.

Which is a personal language, excuse me,
in the evening
                     when it cools down a bit.

And van Gogh and Gauguin are trading
gutturals in a yellow house.

A bright blue jacket hangs upon the wall.

Which is likeable.
And drying oneself with a beach towel, green
and green.
As we're all leaving somewhere
for somewhere.

We were on a bridge over the pond.

We were running through the trees
and the interplay
                           of sunlight and shadow
for this.

Perhaps I was overly anxious.

And it was always almost summer then,
or just after. Spots of sun, divided
yellow and blue. Figure on the bank.
Figure in the water.

I used to remember all their names
but now I don't.

It wears you out.



What & Who & Where & What

Decorative treatment of surface and space.
And I'm right here at the window or the door looking at the standing
       wave.
The two figures in a choreographed dance.
The house and the yard.
It's a nice time.
A bit of light, and my personal symbolism of everyday objects.
The spoon against the bowl, for instance.
The window against the wall.
Sharp linearity, order, and balance.
There may be no single answer, and their sleek, impersonal surfaces.
The chair.
The nude on the wall.
The solid blocks of color that form a backdrop to the scene, presenting
       itself.
Blue and green.
Or blue and white and light blue and blue and green and yellow and
        olive.
But these are all suggestions, not depictions.
There's the sound of the ocean, or traffic.



It's Any Move. It's That People Are Places.

Things, not emotions.
Where you're falling off a corner
into the sea.
The many boats.

Or the picture of skin over your bones.
The better picture.

We drove to the coast and it took three days.
We stood in the water.

What unquestionable good news. Where the life
and the dream of the life
are one.

The square of the blanket and the blankets in squares.
Such an ordinary place.
The umbrellas in circles.

Which turns into a chase around town
for everyone.

There is this family
like wind through the umbrellas.
There are these palms
in the wind.

Here's a boat with water in it.

The water has a hole in it,
where we've been and where we've not been,
reenacting the scene
without sound.



More Versions of It's Real if You Say it Is

The color of your eyes.
The distance of the field.

And the field in the distance
full of people.

We made it through the city
or through the lights
of the city.

What the country does. What
the year. The house you keep driving past
for no other reason.

I'll try not to worry you, we say,
watching the parks.

It's all for your little green hat,
as you're surrounded in falling leaves
some November. Some
October, so full of running across the field,
only running is real.

And sometimes we say things
only because they sound good.

Don't let me worry you.

When you go clear, and the streetlights
are passing, we're all
going clear.


Sun Over Water

And later, on the deck overlooking the lake,
everything's changed, I'm different now,
I'm thinking of our sudden innocence, and the sun off the lake,
and the sun in my glass of tea and ice
in the quality of this light in this place, and the people
there in that light thinking thoughts from that light,
crisp against the crisp outlines,
when it's good to lose control just a little bit,
just to see it as a sort of economics, how it all works,
despite a serious shortage of interesting questions.

A certain randomness is called for,
but one where, within the unexpected
one can feel perfectly safe, like giving the tea away
and deciding on coffee, or all the things you draw
and grip, when drawing and gripping are in vain,
but still all right, because it's the same for everybody,
and it's hard to see what difference it would make, anyway,
there among your second selves on the trampoline,
your elusive, your undone lives
and their gaudiness, where it's always the flashy ones that call,
unsinkable as the last bit of hope that that
is your life, and this the shadow.

Maybe nothing at all, maybe I'm harmless, or mostly,
and coffee on a spring afternoon is just pleasant,
as the figure taking notes behind the trellis
is only documenting what is, and the bees fly in circles
and it's always been one day, and everything
I resolve, it's a sun over water drawn by a child,
where it's always one house, a couple windows, and a stick figure
with some birds and a tree off to the side,
over by the edge of the world.


Sign for a Boy with Flowers

I'll do whatever you do because that seems the polite thing,
and we can each say, maybe my friends need me, or,
what do you say we break for lunch?
We'll be making our way then, past chapter two, into, I'll be leaving
        now,
which should be the conclusion
but it never really is, is it? Instead it's just another door
into an open day of other people, with a helicopter
past the park on the river, in any of the tenses you can imagine.
Wasn't that interesting, how it's always a private event,
and how we always look like someone else, the woman on the
       bicycle perhaps,
or the kids playing with the water in the bathroom, and all around us
these floating quotation marks?
Context is a fairly attainable goal, but ever shifting, and one
you don't see yourself ever getting out of, so it tends
to pale under the light of long-term definitions,
and instead becomes something of a series of menus
and ever more complicated math over the proper gratuity.

And I feel I'm always stepping off the same stoop,
and it's always a bit wobbly and generalized, like Missouri,
or your second-floor apartment that was always too hot in the
       summer
even with the two windows open, a collection of things
people read and reread. So we step to the sidewalk
and ask questions. What does this tree mean? And the street? And
       walking
up the street. . . . As it's convenient, currently, let's say it's about
       sitting here in this park,
we can sit here like money, or the combinations
of gestures over money, the river going forever, and forever
still a couple lives away.