STREET CORNER

                                    There was an angle

                                    where I went for

                                    centuries not as a

                                    self or feature but

                                    exhaled as a knowing

                                    brick tradesmen engineered for

                                    blunt or close recall;

                                    soundly there, meanings grew

                                    past a second terror

                                    finding their way as

                                    evenings, hearing the peppermint

                                    noise of sparrows landing

                                    like spare dreams of

                                    citizens where abstraction and

                                    the real could merge.

                                    We had crossed the

                                    red forest; we had

                                    recognized a weird lodge.

                                    we could have said

                                    song outlasts poetry, words

                                    are breath bricks to

                                    support the guardless singing

                                    project. We could have

                                    meant song outlasts poetry. 

                                                                        (originally published in New American Writing)