You can work for a word but find, too late, that a touch will do
You can rely on touch until your corners all illuminate at once
And it’s suddenly exposure that purifies
***
Your habits don’t fight fair, though, so why should you?
The government don’t fight fair, though, so why should you?
Whatever finally cracks you shapeless won’t fight fair
So why should you?
But you should
***
Out across December’s brittle allotments someone knows how to
Tend even for winter
And how to choose the fixings and the fillings
That go with this place
That’ll do: a guide
Someone grandmothered into the hows and wheres
And the identifications of nonpoisonous fungi
***
December’s eyes are blasted wide open,
There’s so much to look at
Such a lack of colour and country to take in
So much to look at
So fair from edge to edge
To planar mysterium
To things-in-between-things,
***
And so remember to:
Be kind in spite of, always,
And not because of.
(For that errant way a great and Decemberish laziness of spirit can only lie)
And the clipping shears are already being dipped in a steaming bucket
In a great shed, or what have you,
Preparing Spring’s recriminations;
Her Logicks;
Her miraculous gabled house.
