A winter fly,
not yet dead in this dead of winter,
flies. It flies
in the face of flies not facing winter's
little white deaths.
Not yet.

From isn't always. To is,
and it comes with a blue
bucket sporting red letters.
It comes in a blue bucket hung
upon a wing. OD is an ending,
the ending of that red,
and of that reading,
but I don't know
what it ends. It's not

ODD. That's a beginning.
Even odder, it's not
where I'll keep this secret.
I'll leave it, not in a bucket,
but where I always do, where
I left it before, in the internal
ear you'll listen to it with
while you read it. It's not
really a secret. Have I
told you? Have I ever

told you, each time
the plane's wheels lift up,
it feels only slightly,
only slightly less
miraculous
than the beating of your heart.
Then the beating of your heart
lifts me. It takes me
from and to.

This coincidence
is only the difference
between paying and stealing attention.
I stole
a glance at a bus. It speaks its destination
in lights, and the lights think
they know where
you are. I don't, but I know
I won't go there.
I know instead
I'll go home and not watch the TV
where actors speak with words
not lights, and they speak one word to me
at the same time,
the exact same moment in time,
one word, a name,
pops into my far-away mind.

lonesome doesn't move, it clings
to time-tapered tree limbs,
to grey
sidewalks refreshed with a white snow,
and to the blood red brick walls overlooking them,
but not overlooking what went
past, no, not overlooking what passed as a life,
a life that went speeding past them,
with no quiet moments to take a breath
or to sit within them;

the past didn't go
the way she wanted it, the way
we'll see it, not the way
the blood red brick walls wanted to feel it,

but the bricks hold it, with tree limbs,
with walks, and they hold her,
and they offer her, still lonesome,
Hattie, stilled by blood, here to me,

and she comes to me, no, not her,
but the thought of her still blood, and when I take her,
or the thought of her, I take it
away, a little of our lonesomeness, the blood

i am the king of insects,
he said, he says,

he continues
a conversation
he started but dropped

he starts, he stops
this conversation,
it’s ongoing,
it went, it goes on,

he goes on with it
to the fine veins of a tattered brown
leaf, he doesn't know
leaves, but he’d guess this one is
from an elm, he guessed it, he guesses

it became, it’s become
plastered to the window with a glue,
this glue called rainwater, he calls it
rainwater, and it was,
it is a glue, with the winter air,
stronger than paste,

much stronger,
it wouldn't,
it shouldn't
hasten anywhere, so he picks up
where he left off, he leaves off
after long pauses,

no,
no, not the king, per se,
but they flock to me,
not like they'd flock
to a living leaf, or a wayward crumb
of pumpernickel, but they come
seeking
something,

I said I was a king,
not a wise man,
though wise enough,

and he paused,

and he pauses,

but he can't continue,

he tries

but not with a glue that's dried
and a leaf that’s slipped,

it dries, the glue,
and the leaf slips,

it slips and floats down,
down to the gutters
filled with so many browns,
when it hears it,

it has heard it,

enough

And then I'm here,
and when I'm not here too

They walk past me,
and I see it in their faces,
the generations,
and their generations,
when they walk past me,
the worse-off
and the better,
they come too,

And they come,
and they come,
and in their faces
there are shades I can't name,
but every one of them is,
and everyone of them is
beautiful

And in their hearts
there are whispers,
whispers that speak in shapes
I can't measure,
but they whisper
pleasures,
and they whisper of their pains,
and they're not like mine,
and they're not unlike mine either,
and through them all,
they have, and I have
stayed strong,

And they've come here
and their strides have covered,
they do cover,
not distances,
not years,
but those joys and sorrows,

The joys and sorrows of many
yesterdays,
and they came from those many days
and those days flowed out
from many places,
from many places
that are now one, and that one
will go too,
into many,

There will be many
tomorrows,
and into many
tomorrows,
it and they will go,

And when they go there,
they'll go everywhere,

And when they go,
everywhere will be
one place
and nowhere,

And it's from there
they'll bring me back,
and it's to there I'll go
and I'm going there,
and I'm going there
again, with each of them.

And the bay, not purple
but purple
in this light, addresses
all who pass by it
with its uncountable,
jelloing tongues. "You
didn't come here to stay. You
came to put on calcite
layers. To let what's inside
grow, or change,
or become, what you'll become
when you no longer come
here."

Most don't listen, they watch
the wind
make a dead leaf hop.