Five-Fold Symmetries

If I present myself to them,

what of their measurement and their avoidance?
It is a survival, a learning to live

A pellicle thin as skin on black tea.
Few poets don’t wear the mask.

Part of her wanted nothing
she had long ago stopped trying to understand
it was always paradoxical and imprecise
causing great difficulty


Then it was summer
their posture and noise,
mixed with other qualities as meditation, perfume
a boy in a red sweater, a bias-cut reality.

What if I said to you that it was your failures 


that buckled into my truth
.
You call this vestige passivity?

Some say the soul is made of wind with stooped shoulders

and we are a mere sigh.

I have the power to see in the distance
there is much more than what it seems.