she grabs orange-blossom fistfuls of her hair
����gives in to openmouthed dreaming
into the machine ����� perhaps a call is necessary �
a call to the wolf-all-knowing������������a call
to Hanumen composed on string-plucked moons

her Sundays are spent as a wombat burrowing
� ��into each ghostly afterimage
the Bicknell thrush never knowing her daddy

������fly a black-gold sky over waters
������never rid of the osprey's yellow sweep

nearly perfect������the swinging scraping water
lashes out, inflates the poem with diamond-bit
sunlight to nest in a giant dance, a reply to illusion

��������to her
�����������������over
����������������������the salt

��������and finnan haddie

she forgets pearls, their syntax
��eyes�����snow�����plectrum of
morning madrigals, their dead-leaf forms
in this earth never met������the moon's lies pass
not as oddities, but as strung carelessness
through petals of love-lies-bleeding

her every hollow rubbed to silver, it amounts
to nothing�������things, life, a bowstring

she opts for dulcimer notes
in place of grammar


� 2004 by PJ Nights