I Read In A Quiet Voice

too quick for reflection, a mere flit-speed

dead flush to and skewed exactly zero from

really aligned with that crazy mixed-up coconut

Lucy, before Carmine's spinning butterfly toes

sank any chance never had by one such as me --

poet-recluse, bard of the meantime, till we get there.

There being where being there alone

expects light-piercing literal dashes to

do just what primordial dashes do best,

and leave space for a mark, again, like me;

taken at short odds, and spilled long:

how many, remember now, is it ... nine?

No, no, seven, seven cherries make the rack.

And the man (not that one), is he forged first in

profile's brief suggestion of image? or faulted, first

for leaving, then for going (not quite the same);

and only lastly, for the brief wanting of

more than they were near aligned to.