the sun's begun singing,
her rays, tangled up in
coagulant clouds;
and the breeze by the river
feels to me more like
bad breath than mere air
as I walk along the wrinkled planks
repeating without speaking
old bits of conversation—
and thinking how words
are too small, or too dense,
or too disjointed;
they are like calcified fossils
of the feelings
which once walked,
and talked, and pointed.
But still I lope, greedy
and shameless as a convict,
keeping those words both
intimately close
and deviously hidden
like contraband
underneath my tongue
on my way back in
to some solitary prison.
