LARGELY IMPORTANT EXCURSIONS FOR JEN

How do you in digital differ from you

stunning at dawn

or in deserts near Calumet

that spool their sand out over slow moving rivers

in long auburn ribbons

while the canyon cuts purple-ish

and is uncertain

about your sex life within it

And what about words in the cabin

we theorize was occupied

by a dead author of children’s books—

After all

you cannot control the deer

with your pinky or thumb

or undo what’s said or done  after I blizzard you

with my mythical thoughts;

Things unlike my pinky or thumb

that cannot spruce up or make a turn within you—

Yesterday but Yesterday she says

And I realize now

Jen will never marry me

unless I go back and rouse a silence

from the disquiet assembly.

WHITE SQUALL

The advertising intern spends his afternoon

placing similarly sized stickers on envelopes

that might or might not find themselves

swerving through secretive mail tunnels

in the dry and yawning belly of Port Hope–

paper jet setters

off to the mansions and rebuilt New Orleans

distinctively styled bungalows—you know the look!

A famous cantilever or well-loved archway

The predictable manner a stone supports itself

and a baby cannot quite spoon itself

the orange-ish morning pablum which

resembles the hummus  Matt makes with

the resigned glare I’ve seen enough

times to know that making hummus

represents a respectable task to carve away

at the day with. A field ablaze

with horses Not being able to tell which pigeon

leads the flock (which moves, I think, like

a ladle, or the way ‘ladle’ sounds.) The dipping

I guess, of the archway or the cantilever

and the way I’m pointing out that a crest is static

on one particular level of definition

but is really buzzing about oddly on a lower level.

This was a hallelujah moment, though, looking out

over the slow thrust of Calumet river

and knowing for the first time (it took at least

6 months to chop away the spikiest branches)

that the white squall is a quandary to be answered

by a rolling up of the curtains and a certain

concerted focus on the porthole—

it will be a churning arctic white

and quite an adventure.