This morning
I am turning—
and reading over
all the leaves;
old,
wet spider-
brown pages,
scattered everywhere
but empty—
and taciturn
save for whenever
a quick piss of wind sends them rumbling.
What?
What?
or—is this?
Poetry? I wonder.
Who?
is this?
A poet? They whisper.
And I shiver
a moment then, and turn aside
with a cheap sneeze, before
unbending to leave
with a gait more
open than before—cold,
damp, but lighter, because divested
by these wordless exchanges, borne
inward on some clever
mere air—of the stale knowledge
that my testimony will remain
inadmissible, not
because
because
a warrant here
has yet to be granted,
but because none
had ever been
needed.
