First Things To Hand

In the skull kept on the desk. In the spider-pod in the dust. Or nowhere. In milkmaids, in loaves, Or nowhere. And if Socrates leaves His house in the morning, When he returns in the evening He will find Socrates waiting On the doorstep. Buddha the stick You use to clear the path, And Buddha the dog-doo you flick Away with it, nowhere or in each Several thing you touch: The dollar bill, the button That works the television. Even in the joke, the three Words American men say After making love. Where's The remote? In the tears In things, proximate, intimate. In the wired stem with root And leaf nowhere of this lamp: Brass base, aura of illumination, Enlightenment, shade of grief. Odor of the lamp, brazen. The mind waiting in the mind As in the first thing to hand.