Enucleation

Poached
is what I think,
every time,
yolk spooned
from a neat bowl of bone
which seems,
crazily,
improved, prepared
for some further sight:
a hagstone, a hazelnut, an egg
guessing more
than the thief
rattling in a nearby tree,
full of the past
or buzzards riding the warmth
of what they assume
is the future
above the still, eyeless
present.

Partners

I see them standing in yards
this time of year wearing overlarge coats
and knit hats on weekends
watching partners on ladders
limbing trees or cleaning gutters.
They turn at the bass thump
of cars at the Stop sign,
think of their own
Wranglers and Mini Coopers,
personality used
to a suggestive in between.
Sometimes they wave,
hesitantly asking
an uncertain connection
that they leave
to take on the character of its landing,
raked up years later,
a faded gesture, gorgeous because
it’s forlorn and vanishing
according to its properties.

First Responder

There’s the pile of stuff
and then the other
not beneath
or in any dimensional space
The weight
of autobiography,
sop of what you’ve taken to heart,
stray hair bookmarking the page,
flakes of skin in the gutter

As soon as the lesson is learned
it’s a rock littering the side of the road
next to the Watch for Falling Rock sign
sighing on its springs,
shying from traffic;
the kind of empathy
that dreams sitting on its luggage

Memory and imagination,
the problem of description,
prayer
dense as a black hole
signaling to the universe

Tap, tap, tap

of the catbird
with your child’s ribbon,
pennant of a forgotten Easter,
perched in the cedar;

how we are taught
to reach out to the other side.

Learn more about Matt by clicking on his bio: https://thievingmagpie.org/matt-thomas-bio/