clock is a series

leave out less and/or
leave out differently;
sometimes there is nothing except
a not-now and not-yet
then, at those ab-times
candles can give off something
like shadow and light can
sway in packets
on walls.
tonight the rhythms are
upsetting themselves –
the parts of me that encounter
the parts of you
still have a commitment
it’s simply another discipline
or another flight
into
something that looks
like antiquity but
only if grasped from
an invested order.
Put me not first or last
rather gather
me in from an endless outside
and on a grey couch
we will imagine that we
see
the ‘night’
‘fall’
‘down’; the clock is a series of birds
and
there is the same frog here
as at your grandparents’
(but without eyes).

it takes effort, this
wrenching free and it is not so simple
as a getting-away.
a clarity arrives with the teenage hours
and I see how closely the revolution of some
is akin to exclusivity, but calls itself
with sneaky names.
what kind of light on-going
(as in léger, not lumière)
can we offer one another?