Words
a poem is a house into which
words are inserted
permeable, vapour or rain
altering the light outside
a movement before the movement of trees
a lens on those branches
words drop into the street
onto the floor of imagination
a sky contains all this,
the jigsaw
of a baroque painting
things tending outward at angles
held together for a moment
space between the leaves
vivid, darkness
cast down on the earth
a row of books lit up
in shifting reflections
it might be calligraphy
or it might be somebody,
a figure deciphered
from advancing ground
absorbed back into it
a kind of writing
it might be a mud wall
or a window
a day to move into
as the lines advance
carrying the writer along,
shapes of buildings behind trees,
part yellow, part drab green,
denote a suburb
one autumn in another city
where I gathered random notes
to rescue a poem from
the weight of import