It always seems so golden at first
To be the candy man
But it always turns to a curse,
All thought directed at the treat,
The provisioning of which is of no concern
To large wet lips smacking,
To whom my hands are Lord
That can be bitten.
"Impulse control, Brio" one may say
To his frantic, unneighborly neigh
But there's no substitute for enough time
Spent roped to the post
Chomping on an imaginary bit,
So that he can see how the world
Is allowed to exist as it is
Not as our deep down impatience
To be at peace with ourselves conflicts.
Ah but I have been such an addict
— Maybe not for apple crisps —
But for wanting the future told,
To give the illusion that it is withheld,
To pretend not to know when I have everything
To be known hidden in a nest somewhere,
So I can create love, from not having
— Carrots or county records — it doesn't matter,
It's that old magic trick of distance that counts.
The crow has moved his pedagogical pedestal
To the lone telephone pole.
He sounds like an airborne crocodile
Who's swallowed several toads.
He brandishes his wings' translucence
To thoughtfully explain what I will never know
Before his disappears. Is it friend or foe,
What has already happened
But for the timeline that's not yet let us in?
If the saddle stays on his back long enough
And his hooves kick up enough nebula dust
With no hope of ever surviving the wound
Whose straps are tightened but never removed,
He'll gallop through it in a swirl of healing
To learn what he can choose to ignore
On the higher plateau, if the mind says it's so,
No separation anymore
Between horse and sky.
But staring down time on its own terms
Requires resistance to words, foregoing actions
As two beings joined at the heart
Are forced to listen to a whisper within
Whose stillness removes all confusion.
We turn to statue by the cactus berries.
The crow returns to the creosote stand
But this time is silent in the pause between sets
As a cross-tie relentlessly clangs the wash rack.
Only in the silence is it possible to hear
How every trumpet will someday be
Unveiled in the universal score
At the perfect time,
Every individual
Will find the only notes that can be chosen
On their own
In misspent improvisation
To avoid a truth they claim not to know.
