Hypoteneunce

(2016)

Tuesday is the diligence of pencils.  Thursday is papers piled

and filed irregular as gopher mounds. Friday is a clock. 

I measure time no less than time measures me. The verdict:

habitual innocence. What I am told is not always what I feel.

Do tell, genius can solve a quadratic equation. That time

I plumbed second degree was unsettling; I felt approximate, 

felt subtended. Without habit, I resume ignorance.

I never factor in the motives of superficial muscles. Still,

I heed knives; I rebuff stones and sticks. I protect my back.

Saturday’s crowds and clowns by Sunday are an excursion

of recalcitrant bones. The defrocked clock the sky.  

That moon, like everything else, has a core. I’m not the only one

frustrated by a rock heart. Soil cannot litigate against deluge.

The ocean contains salt while fresh water collects

in a depression. Patience, and these memories, from one: another.

Know what I feel: sediment settles everything.