Smatches

An ocean must prove itself by puddles,
a mind by gaps, the spirit drying up
in smatches of this and that. Departure
will reach the point of flight too late.

Distance-extenders go. Dancers smeared
on leaves of echo near the loose hipped sea.
Autumn amputations empty semaphore
from arms. This signing is too great to bear.

Its absence fills each tree. The sap is worth.

In one of its reoccuring candle rooms
your eyes were promised to breathlessness,
so we raised the shade toward horizons
that fill the sky with hangings. Each voice

is cupped in cuts. River occurs like a sentence.

Copyright © 2005 Bill Knott All rights reserved
from Bat City Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission