Number 35

COINS

there are usually coins
in your pocket

you feel good
with a little more weight
on one side

it's the pretty joy
of asymmetry

the burnished jingle
sounding the all-clear

you walk on
rhyming with the birds

Number 34

The Lion Hatchery

they fabricate lions here
starting them
as spoonfuls of mercury
heated in silver crucibles

with melted gold
for their tawny coats,
sticks of amber
for eyes,
ivory spikes for teeth
their claws are bronze

the lion forms quickly!
the finishing touch,
its horizon roar,
derives from
percolating ecstasies
of thunder
kept in strong chrome jars

Number 33

A CRY OF PIGEONS

a man finds himself
in a cry of pigeons*

“you can have your
sphere of air,” he says

“just leave me
the sigh of grass underneath.”

*George Steiner, Anno Domini (Woodstalk, New York: Overlook Press, 1980), p.159.

Number 32

INSIDE A LIGHT BULB

inside a light bulb
there is a filament
but also a vacuum ocean
of hot glowing fishes
sizzling seaweed
incandescent clams
and mussels
son-et-lumiere shipwrecks
and sometimes a bigtail shark
hot as a radiator