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SO MANY CLOTHES ON


As I was lacing my boots,
I said to my dog,
How come in the winter,
I have to put so many clothes on
and you don’t?

I said, When a thing is
true in a way,
the way might be more interesting
than the truth--
don’t you think?

For instance,
it might be true in the way
that a pun is.
Or Jesus Christ.
Or Rene Descartes.

Like a pun, or a parable,
or a “math fact” . . . .
When I’m in the woods,
I don’t stand in the middle of the path
to pee, I find a tree.

Could it be true
that as many ways exist
for things to be similar
as for things to differ?
You and I, for example.
Both such good dogs.

(first published in Mudfish)



SNAP


Poor mousie
living for months

on toilet paper
from the linen closet

one day finds bagels
and English muffins
in a kitchen cupboard

thinks she’s died
and gone to heaven

yep
 
(published in Three-season Views)



THINGS THAT FLY OVER


Birds: humming. Swift. Blue. Black. Sea-
bound gulls. From land-
fills. Or vice
versa. Goose. Duck. Not:
loon, cormorant (paddle
past), heron (strut
past), osprey (over-
fly water, seek fish). Not:
fish.

Bats. Rare
planes. (Sea
planes fly fast over
water, seek what?) And
satellites. Neighbor
buys cell-
phone size black box for boat that
seeks satellites one two
three, tells
latitude, longitude, precise
elevation of boat, says, “Three
hundred twenty-one
feet below
sea level.”

I have
nothing to hide. Come
find me. Please. If you want,
you can. I’m
right where certain things fly over,
certain don’t.

(first published in Passager)




HORUS NON NUMERO NISI SERENAS


Most sundials are flat discs
with a prong sticking out,
a gnomon, a shadow-caster
at any given moment
preventing that moment
from seeing the sun.

Most suns are spherical gaseous
flame-storms in whose light
the sundial is obliged to teach
by darkness, and whose heat
prevents close argument.

Most arguments, like most sundials,
stick up for themselves.
Otherwise, where would they be?
Most are circular:
hop in anytime. Hop in anywhere.

(first published in Poetry Northwest)



“BLUE SOFA”


Imagine that you entered the room
from some other galaxy, from some
metallic planet where such objects
don’t exist, not even the materials,
not even the concept. That therefore
you’d never sat down in anything
remotely like it, and sunk down into it,
felt it receive you sighing with pleasure,
that you’d never smelled that waxy
deep-sweat smell of leather--that you
then saw the piece here and presto,
as if you’d received the full variety
of experience from the one sense of
seeing, all at once, for the first time.
Except that you wouldn’t. Realistically,
your own experience couldn’t have
prepared you. It’s more likely you’d
think of the piece in some other way--
something to eat, perhaps. Suggesting
that the metallic-planet scenario is
just a failed attempt to express how
the piece’s sheer presence could expand
into multiple dimensions, this piece
which can be what it’s not, as you can’t.
You’re not from some other galaxy and
neither am I, as I imagine us, and we
can’t either of us experience anything,
a made-up painting of a blue leather sofa,
for instance, or any element of that,
for the first time except once. Even if
we sneak up on it. But almost. Almost.



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(Copyright © 2004 Bob Brooks)




 

Bob Brooks