Camille Martin

 

 

four from "fabled hue"

fields and lakes and
fields again
just enough light
to see the time equal
to a tremor
high up in a tree
a lasting rain on
yesterday's roof
one drip
winds up much later
wiped away
up ahead categories
of delicacy
every turn's small house
as inevitable
as now

*

your sense of direction flips
into the once-puzzling barbarism of
other species. they exhibit resonance
partially and partially
cover their first mistakes
by swimming even more
seductively toward you.
you become the subtlest
of oxymorons
as your daily
thought and feeling
grow short and endless
and impossibly more supple, ready
to alight on steepled sand
in lamplight. even though
you live in a shanty by the sea
you no longer
dream of fragile roads
on islands of mythical syntaxes.
you still climb two sets of stairs, but
insects have blurred them.
if anything goes wrong
you resort to the simple device
of standing in bright light
unthreading far-flung peninsulas until
the letters run from your skin.

*

motion continues
gathers the storm
over endangered shores
to a standstill
at dusk people in boats
begin to believe in
dissolved words under
their bodies opening
onto ordinary bays
forget how to recognize
hit or miss
under perfect conditions
turns out the dim light
travels here
from numerous sources

*

careless habit turning pages
sweet dickerings with picturebooks
to learn the peripheral
entanglements of another day's
maidens and rogues always
on the verge of one walking
but both holding
up the fence on
either side of which
more cloudy faces divided by
a teller's shelved endearments
greet and imagine tender reunions
reach across the plane of air
to dust off the cracked mirrors
held up to one another

sometimes they feel like
separate grains
of sand
of clouds pulled to earth
sifting to the center
blending peacefully finally
in their own tale
while along some horizons
light shines from distant dreamed hills
along others this or that
mythic shell complicit with their desire
thinks to wear a mask
soaked in the rays of their eyes
of scattering uncanny fingerprints
to smooth skirmishes
clearing the way
for a more or less ruthless
actual history of misunderstanding
arguments that climb
upward with the smoke
from the results of an instant
sending signals how
a new story and its recipient
get off the ground
outside the book
bathed in blind light and love
new hands at all hours pages turning
at all hours habits upending

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bio/notes