Dennis Phillips

On Obscurity

 

Tangles of memory
snarls of history
chained days
and sparse
And yet the axes point
to autumn
and even here
integuments a word from Stevens
an autumnal word
even here
integuments unbraid
Clouds and the invisible wind
populate the upper reaches.
Or maybe it wont rain
*
Smoke, hecatombs
rise as messages or liberated carbon
but first fire
fluid on the ridged surfaces
of split boards
the poet arrives making notes
as if the world depended on it
or till the daughter
aroused by flames
and the hoof beats of zebras
awakes
What counts for comfort
when comforts the lost gleam
in a vacant eye
What’s the hieroglyph
for emergency or latitude
or grief?
*

Dennis Phillips
On Obscurity

Your eyes are closing
and vessels surround the table
empty and full
a tone, like radio frequency
fills your ears
until you realize its stability.
Your eyes, your smooth forehead.
Your fingers, your sequestered heart.
*
Or as if in a different dream
the battles someone else imagined
populate a field only you recognize.
As if they could live for ever
desiccated young men boast and compare
the powder under the footings of their scaffold.
Moisture accrues
in the parched basin
as frost on shingles
as dew in the arroyo.
This season of Saint Annes winds
constant mountain friction
or is it an angel
with the broken promise of water?