5. Sitting close to the ground, my spine bending; I expect the words will happen according to the world.

4.

Humility is a blank
page upon which
the proud words rest.

3.

Words sit and work
-- seriously spelled
into being; or
unsure, wavering,
and stereotyped.
Words form from the machine.
The letters find themselves
arrayed before me.

2.

Coming from elsewhere,
the machine wrote, reread,
and crafted the writing.

The machine saw the writing
in the book of poetry, in the
set type, and the worth of the word;

while amity, anger, and awe
radiated from the roofs of the world,
and spread over tall city buildings.

1.

Typing,
working at a desk,
feet crossed beneath the seat,
small of the back supported by the back of the swivel chair;
back and forth
as if dovining.

The length of the line is not the length of the thought.

Bathing at Coney

I come to build sand castles,
to romp in and wrestle the tides;
the girl and the smile and the beach
beneath the sun; I come.

Around, around, around the whirling
wheels turn; around,
around the whirling world;
the oyster in the sea.

This rides me up and throws me down.
Your fantasies cling to me, splinter into me,

stick to me like the sand at the beach;
I come here amusing myself, a
grain in the dream.

The Village’s pass-through the history
of western art was on exhibit in
Bruno’s Garret. We came to the water’s
edge to read poetry and cast our words
to currents that carried to the ocean
all that was in the river; streams of dreams.