ABSTRACT
You, there, listening for the poem to speak a truth useful for the nights when one, surprised by a diagnosis, lies planning his funeral through vengeful tearsforgive it if it speaks of the gold dust of spring seeding the laces of boots. Poems are as impolite as they are perceptive, as beside the point as the actual. Their gold sticks to unsuspecting hands tying and untying two ordinary knots then grasping other hands and objects. What else can we offer but our secrets and their failed understanding? The surprised one lies alone with his vision-forever. He craves comfort, while the poem strives to imagine him laboring to realize those knots will outlast him. A poem’s wilderness can make you mad that way. So that, stuck with it, you go to him, maybe, and try to give what no poem can.
