Insiders

The last hour fades like the first.

You are with me in timeless defection, jumping from the arms of now into a more current embrace. Outside, sunlight infects the lawn in effortless famine, the humid course of a trembling, improvised desert. But we are not out there engaged in the yellow journalism

of dying grass. We keep ourselves within, stained by shadows and malaise.

The stories we tell are softer, casting the arm of broken tenderness, cushioning the head of personal displacement. I hear a robin cackle amidst the heat, a dog groaning its poisonous reply. We must sleep now, before these words say too much.

Uncertainty

How meager my bid, the I and Thou of offerings and expectations.

This surplus of learning harbors a skillful lack in effort: my intuitive designs.

It's clear a man can know too much, and yet not apprehend a thing so simple

as the moon, the lover's hypnotic, transient enchanter, easing the kiss of time.

Tell me: The numbers, the symbols, the frayed earthly logic ­ do they

signify freedom? The touch, is it best

that's blind? Tomorrow, perhaps charged

with wisdom, we'll merge under plastic wings: the Icarus dream; the Chuang Tzu dream.