There I Go Again
Small birds are wisdom while the large are hunger.
No, that is another theory altogether.
No one could answer for all those restless apartments,
for the nests like axioms in the window angles
as if mathematics was certain as a sparrow's brown eyes,
the globe of an orange remembered from its peels.
Another is the reason the covers of my books curl volutes
like exquisite pleasures there on the deck rail courting sun,
or that tissue enflamed is first itself with no explanation
until something in the wild riot of the blood decides
on erection or fever. There I go again. I am like the ants
scrambling, unable to find the boot that ruined their nursery.
My guesswork is passing as purpose that satisfies worry.
Why the chickadees bathe in the drip plates.
Why a man must wear arrows while chained .
Temporality
I cannot remember when the planet was dark at night .
I cannot recall a time when someone did not think
there were lines on the planet that resembled a cage
with parallels as the arcs of circles and a fleet of caravels
protected by woodcuts.
I am looking at an acre of doily spiders betrayed by dew.
I am listening to music of such poignancy it should be
called a sympathy rather than symphony.
Because of the myth of immortality and the cloying cards,
I turned away. I forgot for a moment what I intended.
I turned like birds, like a knife in the light, and disappeared.
ALLAN PETERSON's new book of poems, Anonymous
Or, is published by Defined Providence Press 2002. He is the recipient
of the Arts & Letters Prize for a group a poems. Judith Cofer Ortiz was the judge.
Peterson is chair of the Visual Arts department and director of the Anna Lamar Switzer
Center for Visual Arts at Pensacola Junior College in Florida. His poems have appeared
widely in print and online journals and he is the author of two chapbooks: Stars on a
Wire and Small Charities. He has received fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the State of Florida and been nominated five times for Pushcart
Prizes.
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