She was aware of the alarm
clock in the throat of a buff-colored bird with black head.
It’s lovely, isn’t it, the way stasis and darkness
disappear at the rapids? Or change. Yes, change.
Do you want a slice of cake? I do, I do.
The boys broke into the mansion,
setting off bells that had just been installed.
I would like to show you that tree in the forest
where moss bleeds the bark in a most peninsular way.
Twelve years had been shed by the time it was over.
She stood on a rise overlooking a road
alongside a lake that flowed into another,
and another, and another like hours
babbling their latebreaky news.
And everything, Louise said, has its own specificity,
the bird is simply a bird, and thus.
Ditto the murmuring missionaries, their misguided zeal
that forever results in a hereness unused to its thisness,
a real of no real appeal.