A List of Important Failures III

A List of Important Failures

III

on considering if I'd fall for John Berryman too

if i'd waited up would i

have known you’d changed

would I have known

it takes more than one

finger dipped into the lake

to consider it

swimming?

The distance between his lip speaking
and her ear

hearing.

The swirl of dirt-

and the one streak

of gray when you say,  you say:            walking between silence

                                                            and noise is like stepping into

                                                            a window

                                                            after the stone’s been thrown and the one
                                                            mountain 
                                                            of a shard is Hokusai’s Fuji, 
                                                            is the snow

                                                            peaked, a pinch

                                                            of firming

                      

until the distance is... and...

and forgive me but a mere blush

seems to lift the glass up out of the flake 
of putty

to throw it into the night

where if no one is careful, you know, the barefoot ones, having not heard

                                                            the breaking,

                                                            walk along feeling dew, dew

                                                            while their smooching  soles

                                                            depart, red as his friend's wheel-

                                                            barrow.