From the Collection Shake Until Cloudy At some point I stopped stopping to write, life a mark of living not clicking. I wore verbs around my neck swam to think in lengths and stretch the small of my back. Don’t picture me pausing to take a photograph I wrote about syntax in Frost not the woods. In subsequent years I wondered what attention was, yours, mine, the hours I displaced in proximity learning a metal song in quarters of light, pretending to score dinner like a tableau, reconstructing mirrors in the wild nest of country living. False blankets, rose algorithm; the man descended some stairs and cached several years of our lives; it was intended. I practiced a speech to certain men: You are small and I will pluck your mouths and plant them in a river where no one can hear what you think. When I remember the imagination it sings. On the eighth day God said this is what a poem is. My heart and probably yours stutters. __________________________________ From Shake Until Cloudy .…