All Sorts of Possibilities

This brown ceramic rooster, this mottled arc

ceaselessly crowing of its imminent fall from the bric-a-brac

mantle to a headlong, unfeathered oblivion; the liquid

calm of this hand’s idle arrangement on its startled

throat, could spark the trick of flying blind

to a streaked light, to a grand poetic dawn.

This post card from Rhode Island of the morning

room’s heavy doors, the damask grouping

rosy before the fireplace, the faceless mirror,

the massive plaster horizon, ornate and white

as a cumulus sky, to an eye less loving of the stark

might conjure the muse in a skirt of billowing flame.

A peach with a silver knife on a teakwood plate,

a flickering smile on a mouth of crinkled parchment,

on and on the images reach out:

a shot of his blitzkrieg eyes, a stiletto of longing,

the things dragged home out of sorrow, a crimson wash

in the clouds from hearts pinned open like sheets to the wind.

Picture here a caliper in a line drawing--to measure

what is left when all is said and done.  And then for good

measure and all the bungled pieces, a ruler to draw the line.