Regret has its season and sadness its domain.
Hedges murmur with trapped thunder,
a scutter of rustling leaves whispers as though
the coming storm were already memory.
A spit of sand to bridge a pock of shallows,
a lighthouse on a too-smooth tump, with ocean
deepening out on every other side.
For most of the time the landscape is unfigured,
the frail humans slotted in only as needed:
from mistress to tyrant, candlestick maker to thief,
every angle plotted from horizon to dust in the eye.
A smoke-colored dog harangues its tail;
the anarchist rabbits go hop-hop /// hop-hop;
a shaft of wistful quattrocento sun pools a lake
in the sea where a defanged dragon paddles belly-up.
Time passes slowly or quickly, well-spent or ill,
the skits, once completed and enacted and expired,
shed words and meaning like lice. The humans
grow transparent until they simply disappear,
the windows of the lighthouse look out on the vast
surrounding sea and the little spit of land is a drowsy
child, left behind.