After urgency
       

There is no end to waiting, no mind outside the mind
traveling its gravel path, stroking its strewn flowers,

startled by even a seabird's wing-extended shadow,
in deepest quiet a thrumming like bare feet running up

wooden stairs, a dark odor as though the clouds were
pouring smoke, tree branches sprouting rag-cloth,

the sky a whitewashed plaster that fractures and falls away
under a finger's touch, and there is no end to tossing

pebbles and shells that are not the ocean
into the ocean of pebbles and shells.

Tweet

Copyright © 2012 Rusty Morrison All rights reserved
from After Urgency
Tupelo Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission