Against His Quitting the Torn Field

            Let him put his mouth in the
            dust—there may yet be hope.
                  Lamentations

“How, entering,
inside him, it became more
easy to believe I would not
breathe the same, it would not be
my life, breathing, breathed
—out, again, ever.”

*

There was a bird, once,
like that. Or—

Or, shorn of bird—call only—
a calling-to that seemed
it would never end, be done
raveling.

It starts that way. Likely

*

it goes, somewhere else:

the mouth that says You can do anything, here;

the arm tattooed with—
as obviously as if this were
dream—the one word:
Paradise; all in a row, shut

against a frost that, even here, has
place, nine tulips—
seven; oh

and the peonies, or almost, each one
still a fist, which is to say, fat
with chance, or the hard
waking you will have forgotten bone also

*

can be. Somewhere else:

all house lights down.

Rustle of what no longer is required, being shed.

Sounds connoting struggle,
then—

silence? or
—like silence—resolve?

Lights up, on

the male lead, who has just found the body,
the body is someone’s
he loved, he can see
it is dead; all the same
does he rock it, and rock it, poor

*

—bird?

There was one.
As there will be: yes, another.

Those birds fly well
which have little flesh,
and many feathers.

Though the flesh
is our enemy, we
are commanded to support it.

Of leaves, recall,
were the first garlands woven for
none other than, triumphant, the flesh.

*

        Thus, the shield.

                    She set the clattering bronze down, before him.

Carl Phillips