from Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie
The quiet streets of meth
dispensaries closed
for the holiday
weekend: blossom
of razorwire,
and the barbed hooks
of autumn-dried briers
it encloses: outfit
intelligence with such
defenses, the one
-two combo enough
is enough that need
not avert its spectacled
gaze from backyard
security spotlights,
from the unadorned
fluctuations of
morning TV:
from Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie
Seed-flecked snow
and glacial night, curves
of scraped road: misgivings
athwart a guardrail, the blue
-black hour: we choose
the courtesy of suffering
our friends’ exile to
the men’s room’s engaging
tracts, a concrete life
inhabiting city spirits,
the polymered drift
of particulate winds,
a salted river: blinding ice
and trees, snow rags
and sky’s rags as, silvered,
the circle’s clipped:
birches break under
ice’s weight and that
of their own branches:
the full range of unspanned
spaces in view, a single staked
young maple: a wake
for understanding
the throes of subtlety,
the higher places of belief
and unused light