a poem is a house into which
words are inserted

permeable, vapour or rain
altering the light outside

a movement before the movement of trees
a lens on those branches

words drop into the street
onto the floor of imagination

a sky contains all this,
the jigsaw

of a baroque painting
things tending outward at angles

held together for a moment
space between the leaves

vivid, darkness
cast down on the earth

a row of books lit up
in shifting reflections

it might be calligraphy
or it might be somebody,

a figure deciphered
from advancing ground

absorbed back into it
a kind of writing

it might be a mud wall
or a window

a day to move into
as the lines advance

carrying the writer along,
shapes of buildings behind trees,

part yellow, part drab green,
denote a suburb

one autumn in another city
where I gathered random notes

to rescue a poem from
the weight of import