Buttons

Buttons

I like thinking about unbuttoning

words.  As though there’s a whole box

of them to reach into,  sounds to sift bit by bit

between fingers and tinks against

rings.  They aren’t as cheap a currency

as they’d seem—they open and close—

whatever, there’s a gift in the do and undo

a shirt of words, a bone button on the blue

linen.  It’s sewn on again and again,

so that now, years after being new,

it’s the only original—the rest: they are

where the sifting begins:     

            because undoing makes it all loose

            a stretch of thread, the heavy breath

            of the moment pops it off—it is a small

            satellite, some find after sweeping

            or maybe it’s picked

            out of the dust from under

            the bed.  Imagine the missing,

            the missed, the stunning button, not the shirt,

            and then the fingers that stitched it

            in the vacancy, tie the knot, rock

            the teeth back and forth to cut it all

            away from the needle fog, it

            with their breathing.

Do you want the button or the breathing?  And then,

because it’s up to you, which string of words?