Ed Roberson

Even staring out the window is changed,

the private peak above it all brought down

with the erosion of the poise between

the viewable and the mused unseen.

Dissolution so nearly changeless as not

to appear is shifting the sands inside

from what we watched, no more the steady stage

the self-dramatic days play out on    outside.

The silent portent now allowed alert

to things changing    the light

                                                                a darkness

not the normal individual

mortality, but as if the epochal

heartbeat of larger elements, the seas,

the air, had mutated, become chimera,

grown wing, and routed ancestral time.

Even staring out the window, the timeless

is gone. We see coming

in the daily migration of the local geese

to the lake at evening    the cities pull up

and move    in unlike consternation towards and

                                                    away from the water

that had been so calming to gaze out on,

to live by, easy    to not live according to.

And now that seas are adding themselves

into the land, horizons look ominously larger,

the arrivant out of them, faster and clearer.

Now, you see the view is turned on us to frame

human agency become transparent,

light as air, before the picture blackens

as a consequence of our seeing too much

of it as only for us    to use and then

                                                               use up.

The eye is not filled with seeing, with only

seeing, but with understanding the sight.

You should wonder what the necklace of your 

fingernails and teeth look like worn

for instance    by the bear that ate you    more

likely than not    very unpolished    or

a cave wall hanging

                                  too skinny    rug even

peeled open for the floor, 

                                            more belts and wallets 

were bears enamored of accessories, 

what with the sun-bleached tip of each hair

to flop back and forth through their fur

an iridescence    wind-like through a field,

how redundant you are in addition, 

useless   if aesthetics have no nutrient,

but then    you might not even have a beauty

to collect, have anything to do with anything except 

                                                       the way you see

You should wonder what a necklace of your teeth

would bring among the animal trade

                                                                            your ears

war criminals among your own were known

to string like cowries 

                                    of victory              your genitals

in jars on desks your conqueror kept 

to terrify their sharecroppers—

but animals

don’t keep containers outside their bodies 

as their mess; 

                        you should wonder what your bones

drape like in their stomachs

          what your eyeballs light 

in their digestive fireplaces

          what your prune liver

makes them shit   like jewels delivered to the earth

their gifts for fertilizing the dirt—

you should wonder whether your ideas 

of beauty are as generous.