You feed your favorite fly a crumb of bread.
Wind shoulders into cracks of your cramped hovel.
By oil lamp, you sketch an imp who grovels
at dainty feet: toes dandled from a bed
veer upward to a tall, disdainful nude.
Noisy shadows pace your attic. Nosy neighbors.
The soiled, chosen book left on the table
flutters. Its utterance, the joy you need;
its pages are great wings which spread apart.
Jays. Owls. Peacocks. Vultures. Snowflakes--quick
eyelids--leer and flash and melt. The candlewick
snuffs out. Nothing, then... a gunshot's dull report.
The Folks on the Hill
Quoting Psalms,
With punctured palms.
Number 22,
And a front row view,
Of the End of the World
And the start of...
