The Silent Era

 1. The man from the gray house said he was coming to my house.

I saw you and then I didn’t see you . . .
Two butterflies make an
arabesque in the middle distance -- white butterflies. 


 2. What more can be done? 

The pigeon yesterday
crushed and flattened in the street could be so
no further --
crushed and flattened like aluminum foil under all those wheels
in the course of a day, perhaps --
such a process in the fullness of a day could make it
no more a bird-
having-

become-an-emblem-of-itself.  What more could be done to it, to us?


                     A tiny bud of a flower waits to open;
it is closed, yes, while virtually open meanwhile to all conjecture --
Unfurled and already open
next to it a red flower.


 3. Following the eye along the rim, the pendant hasp,

Be careful with the paths intersecting each other or you could
end up
who knows where --
a thicket, a dark wood  wayward and lost.  But freedom

is pulling the leg at the fork up ahead, like desire which also
waits
sometimes hovering as if sometimes above some expectant flower

open already
cupping light

exhaling sweetness and color --

Swoons ruddy boys all afire
snapping towels at errant flies
sunning themselves on rocks, stripping down for a birthday swim
these pearls of youth

they swing on the braided vine up high and
out over the water -- each like a sequent frame
of that gem of The Silent Era, The Fall of Icarus.

What else can be done but to make
parabolas in the air, jump-cut --
arabesques in the water with hands and with feet
and with flashing heads in the Sun
at swim?
But from here, under the cool shade of the Cherry tree
the breeze
shifts low-hanging branches; plays about my hair, over my shirt-
collar
and cools the back of my neck.  And somewhere from
behind me, a bird