Sigilism

JOHN MYERS

 

 

Locks, to stop their turning the smell of the river

where ducks preen into the first of the year and faces about.

 

 

Was it after ingesting the blue feather I would turn blue,

like a peacock turns thistle gold, or when parabolas intersect

heat lightning, even vaguely,

                                                     and what if we were blond

kisses, bound, taut, or a spring, a blue heron, the wake

of her head,

                       and what if twine had cuts, streams of disposable

film, the clatter against our hush on the mute where brown,

the hours stood together.

 

 

The school clocks glow at night, trains whistle, cats back-

lit in a second-story window

                                                    when the river proves no smooth water

for reflection and defeat is a mattress outside the apartments

join the sag of thirty-four years of heirloom roses

                                                                                        along a span,

a prune, a rotary phone. A bush so heavy with sparrows,

                                                                                                     it snows.