— after it’s

 

said and done — at best it’s lesser influences that matter

 

— they accumulate like the discrete nuance of seasons

that insinuate the temperatures of their effects into tendrils

 

twisting to the nuisance misdirections of shadow and light

 

 

 

— it’s — those — that irritate a room with sweat and overwhelm

being well — well lost in the illusions of what self-control

 

shivers with a virus the few extreme nights that remain

 

memorized in the immunity of a cell’s exhaustion

 

 

 

— surely the accidental infinitesimal aggravations that peck

and nag at and infect the nakedness of even the best defense

 

amount to getting along as well as possible midsummer

 

 

 

with the hovering whirr a mosquito — zeroing in — finds

a pheromone in the diaphaneity — or — winter — fever

 

chattering like mad — inside the fires of the surrounding ice                 printable

—

 

— like everything else

 

part of us is

here — somewhere or other

 

and part of us

is always somewhere else —

 

 

 

the part of you

that is not here

 

stays with me now

— in all its unknown certainty

 

and will be so — no matter what

 

 

 

— though the part of you

that is here with me

 

in the fields that fed our sating —

 

is gone — more than equally for keeps                                                        printable

the brook

 

— thirsty the mind plays tricks — take sun-screen and a hat

and polarized lenses if handy — into a blinding sun

 

where unsteady air rising off heated sand can stir the image

 

of an undulating stillness to a tentative mirage — to see

 

 

 

in the refraction a reflection bent by fluid air blurred

in the shimmering of convection off the surface

 

seduce the self-deceiving eyes knowing it false — to anything

 

familiar — comfort of an absurdity — potentially dangerous

 

 

 

— ignoring signs — distracted by the fascination of a dance shining

a brook dappled by agitated scrub rippling a crooked trickle

 

in the hypnosis of a silence on the studied distance —

 

 

 

attempting to approach — silt sift a still sand — or only

 

a shadow passing overhead — and facets of bedded stones

 

fixed to the motion of illusion they are there dissolve                                                     printable