quite why we bother

down the heat and the path along

[by the railway]

by the railway-fennel ]grows it is difficult to find[
though its scent

..................................is everywhere after.

(You have crossed the old, collapsing bridge.)

the big mill chimney is still there—unstill
it shakes down a plume of shade that cycles
like a sun dial gnomon

......records nothing but its own presence
on the water

where sometimes-geese in their own concerns

and chase away the smaller ducks
halfheartedly

"halfway to here and there is that bridge
and after that I don't know"

it seems futile sometimes
but humans are good at/getting/up/again
...............walking
after having been laid waste

like everywhere flies after a volcano

.

Give thanks to the universal Lala!

when lies damned lies and atavistics (for Pam O'Shaughnessy)

under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me—Orwell

not alone not in isolation
bouncing back and forth
the origo of us of both
borne and birthed and transmitted

from one to one to one
warrior-hunter-mother in fire and fret
of the singularity that was both in one
no splitting no breaking of this

our covenant not in violence or love
no gods but us reached out to fashion

evil in clay or flesh but desire
only down the crying years we lay
together

drying on the mudbanks growing
wingfins of the halfheart assembled
together made the monster that wakes
each and every—who now can unweave
the whole world and time and point
stark as an angel and cry he alone
it is he who must not be

when I chose you
and you chose me
under the spreading
chestnut tree?

.

.

send your love to our pale blue dot

for all its unmeaning

Will you live to eighty-three?
Will you ever welcome me?—REM

Virgil and Wyatt are shooting at invisible dragons
that shimmer and dance over the rooftops of the stables
they aim low and wide for the mirage effect

just after High Three-noon occurs mythic collateral
further down the meridian

[these fire-hoofers have secret names, unspeakable
outside of conflagration]

like some sequential pruritus [tell me you know this
effect] lights are firing up
into constellations do you know this effect

of history this working at one that lights another
like the beacons of the body for there in the sand-
<paintings the itch-bird to a low hum weaves>

and it is prūrītus for it is prurient as nerve gas
that worms subcutaneously that ramifies the systemics
that pauses and looks out when it reaches the eye
prurience and prurites and the itch
the deep ache that is such prefix snapping as it swings

low over Tombstone plucking the wounded into dark
legends that dance upon the blinding wavetops

no says Virgil
no, forever

.