BURIAL GROUND
 
          INDEX OF RENUNCIATIONS
  
For what was never known & still known,
what was teased away, taken, distracted
elsewhere, whorls of nightsteam assembled
in the unexpected, the unkept schedule
the next flitting combination
of trellis shadow & cloud shadow
& the winter branch across a white porch
 
diverted, for the thing that almost was,
that never reached the ledge of the language
of itself, for the extensions that floated
about a shape from lambent torsion sprung,
raided by other tensions, for movements
of the imagined, for the unseen lives
of their expressions
 
which go off without us, outside of the few
things of the conscious mind, for the always-
occurring to reveal some strand, tincture,
the copperpeach reflections on an evening
puddle, some patch or section for the poem
that attempted these things,
for its abode of longing,
 
the brick school in the wet morning,
for the act that concurs with every other act
of disclosure, for the life crisscrossed
with these, for the soul of one night
full of itself, requiring nothing,
for the perpetual cancellations of experience,
for their coilings,                                   
                                                                                                                   
unformed destinies winding through metal groves,
for the renunciations themselves,
for the fields of reported flowers,
suggestions half-made, caught, hand over mouth,
for the replacements, for what was found
least & most, inadequate, removed,
for all things then, for ourselves.
 
                                                                                                                        
from Artificial Life (BlazeVOX, Buffalo, NY, 2009)