THE COAL SEA

It didn't just happen yesterday anymore. In its rapture, everything
Was thought nothing of. And between them is the unmeasured distance. The when. Which now
Is just molecular objects in stasis, born only by synapse flare—like a real one, bursting
White trailing tracers in the night, spectacular melancholy shining over coal sea, the tensile
Surface rippling mosaic dark angles pitched between paling brief glitter. Everything can be
Lit for a moment, fundamental to sadness.

~

It was in your coffee, the coal sea, burnt into the blackness, but you lift your
Head from it and everything in the world is the same. The mountain has been like nothing else
This summer, certain and alive in its shape against the azure sky. I come into its
View differently now, having been changed by it without knowing. They will ask for
A better explanation, but only you are far away from them, in no place for voices.

~

Have our locations worn themselves away from us? They must have. They are,
After all, destinations—the only thing that makes them true. And so the sea was the color of coal, even
When it was not. That these places are born in us makes no difference.

When you arrive, the only thing in the salty air is permanence.

__

THE CONSUMPTION

It was always about fruit. Those plums. Our green apple, oranges. Seeing the world through
The objects we inhabit. Later begins the consumption. And the quantum promises: we will
Change the thing we see, merely through the looking. Don't try to believe it; it will still
Remain true. I sliced the orange and rotted it, both. The apple stayed half unpeeled
And bore the other half naked above the sink.

~

We never ate the bananas—they always went dark and into the bread. We used the
Toaster oven like a shelf, resting mugs and letting fruit linger. It's the life of a small kitchen—that
Everything happens together inside it. You might be told about something left behind and when
You look for it, you will begin there. You're certain, but it's too late
Anyway for finding. Always went dark and into the bread.

~

Strawberry tastes of what you wish could remain, but does not. This will be
Told to you, but you will forget. Even now, each tiny seed succumbs to becoming
Unseen.
Each sweetness finds its way into the air.

__

"The Coal Sea" and "The Consumption" are the first two poems of a nine-poem sequence, Triptych. There was a lot of Clyfford Still and Jeff Tweedy in the air.