what does one
blank space
have to do
with another?
Whether the air
that hovers
over the becalmed lake
is anything like
the empty sheet of paper
before which
you sit hunched, in pursuit
of the answer?
If so,
congratulations,
you might be called
a poet—that is
to say, a tortured creature
damned to confect
the explanation
that every kind
of absence might be
custom-
made
of language.
