Noun that I've been watching (86)

Soup.

He discerns the shared avidity for sumptuous and seasoned warmth
Together in an afternoon the reach of this
The pure young sweet tea
And the stories that descend mid-day as light
Goes spare Novemberly
With embers coming to the night
With shadows of a factual happiness

The softer our return to selves
The finer the detail and the more accurate
The versions of our treasured store of risk
The intonation of a brother's voice
The safety of a loved one
The gem tones of a voice so sure in its harmonic blend

One episode is all I see
And everything returns: his limelight flavored
Lime, his laugh, his confidence a mirror
Of my tendency to like the same things
Sung, retrieved, made younger than first versions
When we just embarked and wondered what next
For the world we thought we whimmed into true north.

There is a sentence in the heart that eases into place
The fact of nourishment and pause
To live within this moment as it purifies,
Growing continually recognizable amid derivatives
Like recollection and hypothesis,
Unbound into a just and perfect autumn
Dazzling in its softened colors
Tame to eyelight, swift and soft and sure.

Noun that I've been watching (85)

white noise.

hospitality fosters
well-tempered syllables
that we might form theme
and variation pieces
of uninterrupted night,

repealing the inflected
daylight parsing
harsh noise upon
fields and trees
and flapping
plastic of car lots.

cool November owns
night quiet spaces,
evening the fractures
made by windows
rubbed beyond
the point of clarity.

Noun that I've been watching (84)

duct tape.

what I thought
I would not say
I said so you
would recognize
reorganize
chastise
compare contrast the is
with is-not
in the mind of
the beheld

when I think of stepping back
letting you go
my body dances a mild dance
my heart remembers safety
that was not safe
I keep my eyes fastened
on you and on
your face

I factor an invented
kindness that I might
attribute to your place
within me
harsh magnetic
laced with residue

Ruta

flinders
sunk
drat
mule
comb dust




Mano

índice
pulgar y pulgas
martillo largo
carne y cumbre




Meld

fold your tune
bet belter
issue loath
paw
and pause




Lung

“pensive” rice
sat clown
blat it all
crisp tongue


John M. Bennett

Noun that I've been watching (83)

sandpaper.

hermit edges out vehicular
approaches

terrain's a wildie
one blows open doors windows

windblown follicles reverse the charge
unless you will unhand

the law of similars offers finally
magician work

whatever works reviles philosophy
that needs a coat

of paint (little to say except
surface rarely deceives, being

of course one step away from
one step away

Noun that I've been watching (82)

graph.

primary colors and their kin
bliss the page.
I have an appointment
to be tested
for my capture
of the phrasal wavelength
of absorption by sight.

I was forty years old
when the eyes were freed
of their deep brown
and started taking in.

vividity shames
dowd. it is simple
to be noticed, far more
difficult to dovetail
knowing and being known.

look at the river
from up here
and see land
being carved away.

there is a mark
and an absence
of a mark.

there are colors
shifting with the volume
of light
and spawn of shadow.

there are particulates
both seen and unseen.

there is the trumpet player
framed in a neat white
window.

everyone speaks
of how he plays.
perhaps we each
imagine him
fixated on the page
of notes.

perhaps he hears
by heart.