Everything's Political
for Melanie

The words are the power the words would destroy.
Now it's December, I wrote about this park already,
the powder snow streaming over the walking paths,
blowing in ribbons, billows, all torn kitecloth trailing,
revealing in its traces the soft flank of the wind.
It isn't a sign. It's not the wind's mixed metaphor.
The wind isn't the snow's; and nothing's ours, too.

Either way, now it's March. On Highway 17, Emese
calls them snow snakes. Our tires run them down.

There's nothing in this frail little magic, not to hold,
no stone for power's throat. We ask the words for
true and false, the power the words would destroy.
It's just how seeing makes more seeing, this mind,
ours, running up to itself with shapes in its mouth.
The world's netted through with words, whichever
way, but always too fine to catch nothing at all.

When I did finish this page, it was raining instead.
Either way, it's past four in the night. It's not now.
The wind's come looking back like something else.

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Copyright © 2017 Noah Wareness All rights reserved
from Real Is The Word They Use To Contain Us
Biblioasis
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission