Rusty Morrison

In through our bedroom window, the full dawn-scape concusses. Difficult to sustain sleep's equilibrium of wordlessness. Naming anything, like stepping barefoot in wet sand up to my ankles. Name after name, sinking me farther beneath waking's buoyancy. House, this morning, is pale with the rush of what night siphoned off. Objects, still emptied of resemblance, hum their chord-less cantos. Bloodless, my knuckles knock on walls without echo, testing singularities. Sun on the cutlery offers an ageless sheen. Though it ages the silver relentlessly. New, but still rudimentary tools to be gleaned from my over-used weaponry.

( a myth of consequences ) The ivy across our back fence tangles gray into a green evening light. How a second emptiness un-punctuates the first. Disloyal, we attempt to construct. An ache will tighten but not form. Making impossible even this upsurge of crows across our sightline. The Mayans invented zero so as not to ignore even the gods who wouldn't carry their burdens. Too slippery as prayer, too effortless as longing. Our problem was preparation. Premeditation neutered any rage potential. Years later, the spine of our backyard appears to have always been crooked. White jasmine, dove-calm in the lattice, is not a finely crafted lure.