A PLOY
a plugged-in glow globe throwing
thumbprints of land, islets of the outer Pacific
over snow
stuffing up gaps
in the hospital hot/cool unit.
no sleep at first, dream
about a patch of bog
paved over by the wide margin
Thoreau loves to his life:
“I love a wide margin to my life” – Thoreau.
it was lovely to say
that it was raining
and to mean
that part of you was low: half
was suspecting yourself
on to something: the rest
fell from following
the first half’s lead:
opening a book on the bar
in front of each empty chair:
setting yourself
at the bar’s far end
till night, your own cloud of it
ran right to the orbs of your eyes.
No emotion is pleasing!
Each must be rejected
replaced by an opposite
rejected and replaced by yet another
vast strain of undifferentiated sentiment
till longing collapses
as its silvered edges
ebb themselves equal, eager
to stand there lapsed
by the great lapses
you find in your way
until you find your way
or till you find your ways
have rearranged you slightly
as a mirror rearranges slightly
what has mostly been lived
by sight.
Jacqueline Waters is the author of a book, A Minute without Danger (Adventures in Poetry), and a chapbook, The Garden of Eden a College (A Rest Press). A new book will be published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2011. She lives in San Francisco and is an editor of The Physiocrats, a pamphlet press.