2 poems
Winter Correlation
White pine, white ash, winter’s disk is turning
in our chests. Out in the leafless woods
the sky is brushed with faint red tints,
blue aquarelles so paper-thin they are –
I’ve noticed – conductive of your voice.
What odd logic, a beam of yellow pollen
glows on the ice as the full moon breaks
above the lake, to glean the pauses
and self-conscious timbre of a mind
so perceptible and bright. I’m thinking
through the woods with you, in minutes,
when the gray and lilac ice looks up into
another lake as deep as gravity –
indigo, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, anemone,
seed fluff, the pale cocoons of eros –
between the soundings of your thoughts to sense
a body quick and rampant, untouched.
Giant Flower Arrangement
like two green iris-like stems with white blossoms :
& like two green & slender unflowered shoots
between them : & a cloud
like baby’s breath
at the pediment : (conceives)
a bare gleaming dendrite-like branch
flared out rightward & toward
the event
horizon : & when as fire the branch stands over
a harbor :
a fire-bright shadow
diffusing on the surface : as when
Zeus/someone
blinks & lights up
Hong Kong
Singapore Miami from his brow & across the level sea
ocean birds stilled
& tankers & container ships, tiny
& stopped as : the lightning-tips
graze wave-tops & like braille, the vessels
read with tortuous slowness
back & forth back & forth
under a volting
lattice, electrostatic cloudforms & glass
towers topped with atria induce
archaic light : as when Zeus/someone
blinks & the air begins
to make chimerical structures
& tastes
like clouds & a gray & equidistant dome
that human / heaven / earth
& salt & a pleurocracy & people
(the citizens) (the baby’s breath)
twist : to live : inside
@ fragile green contact points
between scarcity & respect for a “planet of luxury
water” is busy making
copies
of the : so what :
original(s) :
earth & heaven & human :
– HI OVID! – : just a few small changes
to “the bloodstain” or “insect biome” :
can be processed as life-is fleeting :
as when voltage
tendrils brush the tips
of waves the engine jumps forward &
the hydrogen/oxygen myth generates
a wave & a real & beautiful monster
is entreated from the planet
& for an instant
the air tastes
like consciousness
Cort Day’s book of poems, The Chime, was published by Alice James Books. His poems and prose have appeared in many journals, including Agni, Jubilat, Boston Review, and Fence. He is currently working on a new collection of poems.