Thursday, April 3, 2014

national poetry month, day three: john donlan

Wire

Making choices, we flex risk like a muscle,
launch out over the near-absolute zero
between solitudes. Another day, another
universe to feed like an insatiable child

who forgets the last time he was full.
His attention wanders like a searchlight,
hates shut doors more than a cat, barges in
with wet feet, sings as it flies

its spaceship into a de Kooning.
The figures of grace we shape in the air
are necessary. That they're performance too
makes them invitations to a brief

freedom from what most people consider
possible. After the show, let's have
a drink: let's have whatever the spruces are having
if it'll make us as wild as them.


Donlan, John "Wire" Poet to Poet. Roorda, Julie and Elana Wolff, eds. Toronto: Guernica Editions, Inc., 2012. 56.