i sense
erosion at
the rim of the fountain:
my water-thoughts bubble over…
and grind…
sense erosion
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Author Archives: J⊙seph Amm⊙ns
Five Fountains
Here, we
Eyeball people
Speak fine body language:
Haphazard stretchers, you dancers
Must walk
*
Now, we
Eardrummers hear
How summer’s snuck into
Your stoic, winter poetry
Talk right
*
To touch
Is divine but
To grab is a crime but
To grip is to get it – do you
Feel me?
*
Forget
Those rosemary
Flowers sprouting outside
Ten hundred buildings in my mind?
Herb oil’s
Soaked through
My ten fingers to those chicken
Bones, limp sprigs, garlic bread
Crusts (“Scrape your plate!”)
Forget?
Oh no, no – I know his set:
A man who’s managed
To miss every single solar
And every lunar eclipse
A guy who’s great with kids
But can’t handle pets
(I guess because they’re animals)
He tests my suspension bridge
Every time he goes off script
And I can tell when he wants to:
He swings out from behind his irises
And here comes this thing he has to say
Vow
When even the reaper’s
Too flummoxed to cut
The gaunt stalks of flax
From the hillside,
When the mice fail
To find their burrows
And the ants have become
Individuals,
When the geese fly east
Along the equator
And human nature is to turn
Each against the other,
I will seek you out
To ask a favor
And offer my gloves
In return
Ask if your action
Will benefit the mountain
Ask time how it feels
Wobbling
Around the nest,
One step from sure footing,
She found herself flying – now learn
This, too
God Bless
Under
The long freeway
The homeless men walk stoop-
Shouldered and penitent toward
The light
x
give me
ten more minutes
to see that small cloud pass –
give me ten more years to kiss
goodbye
The Boatman
Siren
Modulating
Her words – her voice, by phone
Calls the sinking man back to life’s
Warm shore
The Commuter
The man
In a routine
Cuts the land in half with
His whole life and sees sky from a
Canyon
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