"Everything without you is within you; that is why I must show you so much nothing."
The shadows of leaves, twitching on the balustrade
candlewood and silk, revealing themselves
in the places we've forgotten:
the drive-thru, the alkaloid flats, the dead-end alley. Upon the tips of our fingers are the meanings we used to know,
but the books are unopenable now, their spines warped
under the weight of disregard, the print of the pages
washed away by subtle tides, in whose arms all of us
eventually succumb. Look for it here no longer, it will not call your name.
It will not answer if you call it.
No matter how you seek the miracle with drawstrings,
the mystery of the divine sweatpants, it is this
very search that has made you exchange your grailcup for fool's cap.
The children dart before our gaze, like hungry fish,
but this underwater realm lacks both a king and a queen.
You are knighted only by the moving hands of the clock,
seated only at the roundtable of the watchface. Until then, like Quixote, we must wander the land
on the substance of our asses, settling only for the quests
upon which we choose to expire.
09/03/01