“what can we talk about that will take all night?”

footsteps descending a staircase a cello played pizzicato
a sense of anticipation within the ribs the

blue haze this morning the redwinged blackbirds’
chirp amongst the cherry blossoms an unsettling

silence in an amber apartment a skybluepink porcelain
Blessed Virgin on a knickknack shelf

there was always something left unsaid—
10 years prior footsteps coming down stairs in a blue

Vermont summer evening the damp air off the big lake the
Virginia air spring 1987 was a red rose blossom on a white

pergola an unsettling silence pulsing pizzicato around an em-
brace beside a staircase the unsettling skybluepink

laughter around an embrace the “thin whistled
notes” of white-crowned sparrows’ song within a cottonwood’s

boughs—columbine about to bloom—a room trembling with
anticipation within the ribs—a

sob in the hedge a laugh in the green green streetlamp’s light—
a sigh inside the ribs a mahogany mandocello’s low

C-string tremolo the continual thrill of birdsong in the
cottonwood this morning the echo of unsaid words


(quote from Kenneth Patchen’s Do The Dead Know What Time It Is?)


Jack Hayes
© 2010