SEQUENCE COMPOSED ON GRAY PAPER

for David Mahler*

i.
mid-January mums
and winter statice,
the nightlong hum
of things, wind
in the doorsill,
the furnace sighing


ii.
at the curved line
wind hones along
the snow's extended
leeward edge, the sound
of a glass bottle
spun on smooth stone


iii.
past the expressway,
roofline after roofline,
the evening reddening,
chimney and stand-pipe
smoke like pinfeathers;
saltlines along the highway's
balustrade echoing


iv
warm breath on cold fingers,
cloud cupped there, voiceless,
between thought and sound


v.
across the evening river-
gleam of the Burlington
tracks, the bright windows
of Ruby's Cleaners; someone
an Oriental woman, I think,
is running down a narrow
aisle of clothing, Ruby,
perhaps, turning sharply
to the left and out of sight,
an instant of urgency,
suits and dresses rippling


vi.
Wednesday morning in the Loop
thighs quick against thighs,
traffic and slush playing along


vii.
south of Roosevelt on Canal,
this winter's imperative
scrawled cursive in the road
sceum gurried to an eighteen-
wheeler: "Vamp to Chorus!"

*David Mahler's composition "Rising Ground" is based in part on sounds made by spinning objects.

MISSING MATTER

Of course, it is improbable
that in all of this endless turning
things do not simply fly apart;
stars uncluster, your hand gesturing
just now, or mine, grow vague and disperse
like wings in sunlight, more light than wing,
or galaxies, more darkness than light.

Knowledge has grown so wistful, as though
the gathering weight of fact makes fact
improbable, numbers crunching numbers
until they break and scatter like twigs
underfoot, brittle suppositions,
nothing you can be expected to
account for, someone else's question,

the day's accumulation of objects
turned out into the impending night
like dust and lint swept across a door sill,
the door, backing into the evening's shadows,
itself a proposition. Hold on, fast, back,
your eyes pressed open by the sheer rush of things,
though nothing past this threshold is defined.

Strands of sense, course the music takes,
blues chord caught in your fingers--so long, so long--
had hoped the prairie or the river or the neon sign,
time like tendrils, a grammar's fingered pages,
the highway spun like hope out of the self's ceaseless
hunger--Sweet Jesus, Sweet Jesus--that part of need
so certain it ripples like water across blank spaces.