on boxing day
O will she said we never reach an end,
an end to images, this sick
all-overness, this making of my mind
a spiders’ nest, and life a wait for flies?
For my part, as casual as
a wink/an insect’s wing/a breeze
I pictured me a clearing where
the trees bowed down like dead men,
come whoever may. I waited,
I would realize later, not for love
of bugs or anyone, but for the raising
of the song inside my arms again
—which arms once stirred
becoming as the limbs of trees
that tangle fondly in the wind
—which arms once raised
her face shone like a halo
drawn in tight about the neck
O mother, you who slowly stuffed
entire worlds of protein blood and love
into the thin sock of my being
—you can’t, we can’t imagine, please,
what hand is to the threadbare sock it held,
or rain that on the sudden clearing fell,
or image to the poem on his knees
