To tell you exactly what I feel in unquoted dawn,
in language plain as a teacher of elementary math,
where on her chalkboard a plus appears and then is gone,
her students moved less by numbers than, in passing, a laugh,
a confidence returns them to the abstract
division, which for them is still a game, not sense.
Words are in my sunrise, blacked
When for me, formless, language offers no defense.
Multiply the feeling left by the subtraction
But with what, if not words, or blood, or integers’ quartz crystal
or anything that might take the place of action?
Slowly dew collects beneath the flower’s pistil.
A man alone is reduced to just a fraction
Of the one needed to make his work greater than distraction.
(2007)
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