Word Planet!
There's the waking up and being thrown out in the midst of words.
And then the words in the garden: the getting out, the go.
A rule of words, a pile of words.
Words stacked up (racked up) carelessly on a hill.
And words left behind but hanging off of trees.
Some words on the tip of a sword.
Some words still grim on t-shirts.
Words holding onto embankments while waiting and remembering.
Words in and out of place.
The unusual and glowering words-the tied up words.
The get-out-of-my-neighborhood-words.
But it's sudden.
It's the announcement, the way of seeing, newer words now
wrapped in spindled and gilded gold.
Word planet!
He wrapped the plants and columns in words
only to find those plants and columns unwrapped because of words.
His wings encased in words that now work with precision.
No more wasted or useless words.
Words bound up in the telling fingers of an angel.
Words in blue and gold blankets and in ladies' chambers.
Words on walls with all the same thing to say.
The golden words coiled around the neck of the woman
and around the neck of the room.
The golden words are tight and tighter still at the tips of a thousand feathers.
He will never be wordless.
The blue dress is a dome of words.
There are words hidden in slippers and bedclothes.
Words behind curtains and low stools.
Words written on the inside of eyelids and later sewn into books.
—Carley Moore
The Second Between
Jane Kenyon writes about it best
I remember as I get out of bed.
I try not to overfling the blankets,
but I’m mad at the night and my
listing brain ticking past its chores.
In the bathroom I don’t turn on the lights.
I feel the cat’s ribs and her extended frame
as she stretches on the bath mat.
Does she like my insomnia or just accompany it?
She’s a head companion, a scarf of thought, and a dream dictator.
She chooses to sleep almost exclusively on pillows and the back of the couch
with one back leg extended to rest against a shoulder or a temple.
I feed her and look out the window.
I hope for birds but hear none.
I write two zealous and verby lesson plans in blue ink and a string of post-its.
These are exorcisms really, detailed scripts, each overdone.
I keep myself from making a to-do list.
I’m writing this poem instead. I repeat to myself,
“You’re writing this poem instead.”
The sky is gray now and I nudge the cat with my pen.
Up close her white fur sticks out like fish bones—
tiny white filament floating at the edge of my face.
She bristles and in a moment is off the couch and at the window.
Is it morning?
Is she up?
—Carley Moore