Five Poems

Peter Sacks

NOTE

Others choose more solid figures of resemblance but the wind blows from that place

dividing tissue seed flame unpermitted edges carrying the socket-bone’s

implicit trial—here bend—here study it—the law remains torn feather scrap of

tarmac skin you fill it in you plough over the crater lip past argument the certain

flourish, short-stemmed, reachable with signalling what comes out of the wind

as an arrest, a feeding precedent, this rapid lifting now you link away drive out

each thrust upslope above the mark the mortar set you press against more weight

as for the future peace with gaps a hive a hull white shredding petal wave it will

not stop the work’s upheaval where the impact shows its vein the unencompassable

paying out root thread survival-salted pollen knowing other judgment in the

sideways trace and drag you cast you follow it.

NOTE

Had you existed (this world) had you set your own equivalent across the track

would there have been a further purpose clearing the debris? Or earlier—before

the call, before the guarantees (the stars of heaven, sand, the wings resettling

above ordinary slaughters)—was it to frighten us away? How solitary,

with smoke mixed in, with scrapings. Listen—let the others hear the long

collisions wrapped in silence. Blank flag of surrender & no writing covers you.

CURRENT

The fossil of the fish in candlelight—a dorsal fin

set wavering by current & the spine more flame than stone.

Breathe in.

The words too grow transparent, heard-through, to this end.

What’s nearest to you now?

Ungathered sediment, you’re swaying on your stem

time loosens, thins, through-lit as by an older

element.

It knows you as you will become.

6.12.00

As dead leaves in the space between leaf-shadows gleam, you could not

keep from waking further, disentangled from what might have been

perpetual fear. The core took longer, first whom, then what.

As if all flesh were punishable proof,

they had been everywhere, the trees.

FACE TO FACE

The sky too fed upon itself

& hid behind the point where everything takes on

the sheen of disbelief.

Justice shivered in its mask.

The residue of innocence would speak if it had words. Would cry out

once more for what name? What is its sin, there at the origin?