3 Sennets
BY Camille Martin
XVI
does it take being startled by the ghosts
of a lonely childhood to make a start?
ghosts that feel their way along a rope
dividing the big sea? does the big sea
spawn punctual clouds drifting
toward their little pond? is the little pond not
to be found? does it take releasing
the rope to step conditional steps toward
home, though trackers keep fixing home
to an unreassuring block? does it take
closing one’s eyes to see the old street
strung with alphabetical moorings?
does it take unmooring the street?
one’s eyes? mute mountains?
XXIII
i said i was happy, but that
was an interpretation. the wide-
eyed bride runs out of time
zones and into borders
of daily attention to
false green thoughts
dancing for rain beneath
cobbled clouds, all the while
loathing elements, the
elements, on transient
principle, and pleasuring half-
blind rules governing un-
controllable names:
an interpretation of happy.
XXXI
for jirí novak
i would have swum to you, not knowing
how flames could billow and languish, surviving
luminosity melting the colour off burnished leaves.
or this: ribbons unwind the heady scent of one
ordinary thing to the next. wheels careen
into illusions of a lazy but vital conspiracy
of sounds to trickle down to fill eggshells.
vandals dismantle the starry view of the starry
view. i remember the mammal vividly, splashing
genetic violet onto blue. nesting as i do
in the superstition of my vision, nonetheless
i saved eons for your cerulean arrival. of course
it would turn out that i could write about it
only by not writing about it.
