Shabby genteel

To have thoughts is to mix poorly,
to think is to be both absorbed and transparent
like a pale purple hosta flower that gets fewer looks than weeds.
If one thing illuminates another, it’s either a thought
or a trellis defying an oxidized aluminum sky.

An arrow-shaped bird and a stalled minivan
don’t know how to sit down and think
or walk and think at the same time.
Do I expect to find—descry, I mean—threatening patterns
in flower stalks, overfull pots of impatiens,
dormant moths in cracks?

Incoherent thoughts, warmed by fever,
fill cells of color, energetic
knotted strands in a sketch of a cloud.

Branches stray away from their origins.
Footsteps rush, hang back, strut, stroll, in a modular, intelligible way.
An oval can’t choose to be a circle so is blacked out
with ink that angrily violates outlines.

A staircase with its shadows fills a frame.

Mariposas, cocodrilos.
Una paloma draws in its wings and dives,
flaps to accelerate, averts
a disastrous impact by
folding its neck into its fluffed-up breast,
to stall just as the earth meets it.

Other birds rise ominously in unison.

Because the trees are planted in straight rows
this must be France.
That’s a thought, not a rabbit.

Crickets out of phase—late summer sound.
Asters, leaving behind the forest of anonymity—late summer flower.

Watery, threadbare vision
in one eye, convoluted walls
finishing and distributing sounds.
Complaints oozing like a ripe tomato’s broken skin.