from A Little Useless Geometry & Other Matters

WATER



Hopelessly conformist to any vessel, wavers beneath
the smallest breath, takes on the colours of childhood.
If you try to reason it throws back your image and
withdraws to a depth below the verification threshold even
if its level is low. A wound no two times the same, with
ambition to break sticks and drown stones, not touch
the ground, not shore up foreign investments. Even
in a state of geometrical grace we cannot see time as it
is, only as it passes. So the river shows us while softly
disfiguring our waterlogged bodies on the way to vast
projects of war.



TOUCH



How could the eye know how amiable a curve is to
the wandering hand. How a sharp angle lures us onto
paths known only to the sleep of reason. Going from
metal, which will not succumb, to touching wood is no
superstition, but a keener pleasure than was dreamed
of in my mothers womb. A board may forget the tree
it came from, but the smell sticks to the grain, and the
knots ensure a heritage of resin darkening with time.
What worries me is radiation, the way it touches from a
distance. And why am I so attracted to its secret



MIRROR



Rather than assuage bitterness with garden work I’ve
often breathed a circle on the cold surface indifferent
to what it reflects. It is not dulled by repetition. With a
proclivity for provocation, I prefer it curved, exaggerating
my resemblance to Gertrude Stein, Max Beckmann, Mao
Tse Tung, and the wicked witch of the West. Light the fire
with the rest of the forest, furniture, oracles, what else. I
wonder is time reversed by reflection, like right and left,
or does it escape the mirror So that my image tenses
in an insatiable present, shoulders squared against
chronic events