I promised myself I wouldn’t say

what I expected to say, nor even

something else: but what else?

And while we fill in a few hours

’til sunset, we might ask: why

do we write poems? Hysterics?

Wonderment? Amnesia?

The reassignment of a misfit

identity to something better,

green mind for St. John of Neptune?

I’ve been wondering, though

you need not answer. If to measure

time, a thing archaic: a cord

and colored threads tied with knots

that might record accounts

or thread a statutory grass greener

than the Pandect of Justinian; one

knot might stand for a volcano—

though looking nothing like it!

Or the quills of a porcupine

might be oracular, or an artificial

intelligence in wavering copper,

sharp to the touch. And Legend,

like growth of the soil, moves

too slowly to see, unplanned,

taking soundings where a vast

transitivity prepares for the future.

I invite you to just sit down now

(if you have no pressing obligations)

in the shadow of 666 Fifth Avenue,

and as in a dream where futurity

works itself out in fits and small flames—

look at the fluttering leaves

before you, they are simple gifts, 

walled off in thoughtless, unnerving joy—

and though they are filled with a gentle sense

of concern and acceptance…aren’t they?

they don’t seem to care about you at all—

 

|||

 

Geoffrey Nutter is the author of the poetry collections Christopher Sunset, Water’s Leaves & Other Poems, The Rose of January, and most recently Giant Moth Perishes, among others. He runs the Wallson Glass Poetry Seminars in New York City, where he lives with his family.

 

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