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Like Cuttings for a Wreath
of Praise and Ransom
Abbreviation,
part that gives what is left
away. As if released,
a
stone—as from
a sling. The landscape opening as if no end to it,
a longing anywhere
for some resistance, some
stop: the magnolia, its ring of bird-ravaged
seed-cones,
the birds themselves, a wind lifting
a collar of feathers at the neck of each—stiff
courtiers,
Elizabethan. Clarity, versus
blur.
Fine
distinctions.
Not, it seems,
the cries of joy. Not punishment—think
in terms of, instead,
persuasion. Silo, through which
the rains, passing,
pass unimpeded. Hunger
versus the pursuit of it. That’s what they say.
With time, with wear,
the leather softening. They say
the legs go here. The straps adjust.
Like
so.
—Carl Phillips
Carl Phillips’s
most recent books of poetry are The
Tether and Rock
Harbor. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
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