Complaint to Wordsworth

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           “…for that one space before the word is flesh”
                          —Phillip Levine

Dear Bill,

It’s November, 1:13 a.m. & I write from the moss
             & sod of our common soul,
      imagining us beggars gathering wood under naked hills
              marking the bent gait of a hedgerow wren or
the stout Grasmere stallion’s neck
              curved against Albion’s inland murmur.

      This slippery lacustrine night with cheap wine,
            lost in the drapes of Li Po stars,
             I am ready to dive moonward.
Instead, let’s put our hands to the ash tree
             & slip away, kindling the hermetic fire
     as the mystery laps at our bone & ore.

You hoisted yourself above tree line one autumn
          in glad animal movement
            from an uncertain angled crag,
                  pale eye trembling--
Your ear bristled with patterns of common speech
              atop a Dover-bound coach en route to Calais
                    to hear your little girl
            mimic owl hootings.
What was that pause you seized?—
             awed in the bejeweled
                   & smokeless limn
       of misty London & Thames.
        Your spine tingled with the codex of coming dawn
              & there delivered the aubade:
a necklace of lanterns in willful sight.

You knew the meaning of a Hebridean glen
            under strange skies & dry wind.
There were wild eyes above the abbey &
            always holier love unsaid.

Finally you slipped from time completely.

Dear Bill,

It’s Tuesday again & this is my complaint:
I can find no high objects or enduring things
            no iron twinkle, clarion call or tabor’s beat.
I prod my own skin
      as failure stalks every word—
             not in the telling,
      but in the moment of telling.

& the moon has splintered again.