these are the longest days, the sixteen-hour
daylights, the quick sleeps, so many hours to
potter away and putter about: the baby robins
are nearly grown, though still aflutter to feed
and the nasturtium bucket swung from a crabapple
branch is round with bloom (but using lots of
water): mock orange snows its way out of a
thicket, and the laurel is so sprung with
flicky rain-soaked bloom, I go out and shake
it dry to prevent a split: of course, the
timber rattlers and other shakes are out, as
well (to erect the classic teeter-totter) as
mangoes, nectarines, avocados, pears, plums,
cantaloupes, strawberries, asparagus, many
items trucked in: what a country: nature—
nice, not nice, neither: both: God’s in His
heaven, but not all is right with the world:
the nest’s foul, befouled: the planet’s
riddled, stink flows down the mighty rivers;
dirty water climbs sores up the children’s
legs: the orb, the dulled shiner: we cast it
aside, sucked dry: palpability, palpability,
that is the artists’ realm: I’m really not a
palpabilitist: seeing into the nature of the
apple explodes its skin, mystifies the sweet:
I want to see how things work: I want to
stand in awe of origins: oh, I have something
to tell that I thought of yesterday: I apologize
for the loss of immediacy spontaneity might
have stirred: and doubly apologize for the
cement of lugubriousness that hardens around
the reconsidered: (is this hilarious, or
what?): well, I mean, what I was getting at
is the closeness with which some polar opposites
are married: for example, that truth is error:
(isn’t that a riot?): for when you select
from reality widely surveyed the appropriate
stuff from which to form an assertion, axiom,
affirmation or other muscled manifestation,
you have left behind so much unformed stuff
that your truth is drowned in inopportuneness:
in other words, the road you is on is too
slender to measure the landscape: truths, though,
can be passing views, as of strange bushes
by the culverts, or horrifying bumps in the
mattress: I should have written this down
yesterday (it works for words, sentences,
objects, decisions, etc.) but I was on the
road to the outrageous dentist: the insight
is trivial enough, but I regret the loss of
the freshness