Annie Guthrie

		from The Selfer

*

Not knowing I came to find things colorful watery and kind

In absence I lawful, wary cinders find…. Unkindred,

one flower wilts on the sill when the next is opening. Naturally.

The difference between fantasy and prayer is innocence.

What if wish & love opened at the same time?

Then you would be bored, you say, even though not here.

*

(Thus without freedom does the populace

for something truly round, angle

Armed, wrangling " you"

unhanded.)

*

What "never" in the bloom. What "ever" on dream's shelf,
in sleep, is wilting. Neither, none.

To clip bliss from its opposite: silence. Yet

on top the night's helm my howling, starless
stark Ahems, the tyrant Aha's.

Mouths around word-holds hoof and scrape
thought's stable. Only the heart's able,

beating, unmoored from port of stem,
to hold as words do, quiet ground:
briefly.

*

If I speak I'm jarred and canned,
next winter.

Why do I have to be other than I am
if as truth I want to be the same?

Because you are not that, which only meets itself.
Autumn, mulching.

*

scarce is wonder,

is wonder

the light in mind that blooms

deliberation, fell into.

what are You, thing
apart from thought and breath,

mouthless, not managed -

blessedness?

The faithful must have found
the falling proper.