That old same thing,
Nested as the groin, the animal,
The urge of one for another and
Her high call of existing.

Revolutions take time as the blasphemers
Recalculate sanctity as useful and ethical when
On the run or on the hunt.

Old house, new shoes,
The wheeling of the mind’s eye with range
As more of a number than a myth,
More of a break in the hedge
Like a dash – for language than a
Full blown stop of emphasis, period.

The country lane of the peasant dance
Where time present and future speaks of
Dead Eliot like a cat, a cat, a cat.
The noumenon now fully phenomena,
Gross to the eye, subtle
As the mind’s light of electricity bending in at the ends,
A string of quarks and light years enmeshed
In a family drama of conquest, submission and domination.

One flips and the other grins like the Cheshire cat
On stage with the phantom, the killers and the blood
That circulates our best in veins of blue
With monks in silver and the flue
Where the chimney smoke rises.

The stockings hung,
Milking some blackened shape
From beyond the window
That can’t quite disappear
And hangs around like karma.

Like Zazen blooming,
Looming light as paths not taken
Holding the open as if it had never closed,
Never quite conceived that the print on her dress
Of biscuits and Hibiscus could travel and explain
Like music’s math, what it takes to be over the next hump
Before you arrive, at first unheralded and then
Dense as honey.

By Rolf Stavig 12/15/23