a section of a pas de deux

by David Krump

And it can be as though
settling down in the low boughs
of the hundred pines the moon
assumes a body.

(the monthly penance for a failed first promise
                 from moon to wolf)

For an hour ago there are names:
godly, sensate attachment to herbs:
how to begin: inclusion of thyme.

In the background, clouds ground
down before the surface of a concave
and otherwise cartoon sun, unsettling
spires of the whole thing assembling

in relation to indistinguishable hum
from warm oatmeal spoons. The original sin
of being sibling, son, as in: [
                   ] : ad infinitum.

(how when he slept
                 beneath the trees that day)

Though, not that sort of day,
how old she [forgot ever a child born]
remembered houses she had never owned:
how to dust the pictures on an unplayed piano.

These things you remember having
[though never have] are in fact in storage,
in a sort of storage on the brief cold sun.

(to forgive the imposition
                 of position)

My father swears to god when he lays flat
on his back into the soft belly, the low point
of the valley he can feel the earth spinning and
contrary to the B flat emitted from blackholes

the earth rings out in C minor. Which is
everything entering illness: the indescribable
alibi, the gunplay at noon.

(to discover
                 the disease)

How when I saw him sleeping
right there beneath the trees
I ran to shake him, thinking dead.
Which is pre-death. I [Inspector Jitters]

wait for the return to zero: odometer
of dream tenthing away somewhere in the backroom
of the old house where our pinewood derby cars

embrace orphan dust.
(realizing death
                 is just jealous)
Priceless.

I laid down, un-old, beside the anthill
to notice the purpose of an angular
snaking column of black ants, humping

grain bits and their own dead up into
the hill, for winter use only. To fully
collect the dream. Can not the shadow of this earth
feel rotation too. Which is the difficulty of summer.

(to return to the sun and pollinate
                 our next lesson in control)

That is not your child's shadow dancing
in the moonlight, though it has your eyes:
simple reflex of emotion, sudden grouping.

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