Volume III Archive

Richard Kenney

Canopus

Returning—
Less solace,
So, more memory,
A garden would be a place
Pleasing. More a
Prescience, less ease,
As amorous is,
Really, rinsing as gone seas
Can an unclean mind, in the shade
Of cut forests. Caesar’s,
For example: this jade
Chafing dish, fish, architrave
And arch ashimmer, sheet
Music of cicadas soaking
In the polished troughs
Trees scoop in the sky, so
Swaysome over centuries—breeze’s
Mildest abrasive
Fining and thinning to transparency,
In the saved trove
Of yearning.

 

Classical Proportions

--for Les Cox

Seven heads tall the human is
Compassed in the eye.

Five eyes wide the face is
Facing sky.

As big as a face the hand is
Splayed wide.

As big as both hands the head is
When the human cries.