Infinity

Don’t you remember a thing

can only hold one picture at a time

“As when a man dreams he reflects not that his body sleeps”

it was you in the roadside phlox

that every thing has its Own Vortex

            he perceives it roll backward behind

like a sun, or like a moon, or like a starry majesty

universe of

“Or like a human form, a friend with whom he liv’d

benevolent”

*

Midsummer

Suffer the lilies they do not grow

without temptation to a surface

made of water made of air

                        In the Gregorian calendar

the year moved ahead ten days

the Archer moves into the Goat

sign sooner now     the warming globe

not hurrying

I was Esquire of the Body to Elizabeth

I was a dog-friendly motel

I was a hill of salt on the flats

                        a billiard ball, a stoat

I spy something gray and green

Three gray geese in the green grass grazing

                        made of opal made of ash

Off with a pinecone in your pants

you veer to the end, a side

show, a backward sleep

of all we restive in the meadow

                        spun to topcoats, wept the Queen

**

Lisa Fishman's poems are in recent or forthcoming issues of American Letters & Commentary, Volt, Verse and elsewhere; she has published two books--Dear, Read

(Ahsahta, 2002) and The Deep Heart's Core Is a Suitcase (New Issues, 1998)--and hopes that another (The Happiness Experiment) is forthcoming.

Archived at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/fishmanl_poems.php