Occasional Impressions

Gemini 3

Beginning with the purchase order...

Beginning with the purchase order:
Notice was served on some years’ livelihood
(no choice: lucid imperatives drive rapidly;
they need their motorways), & then
the hospital, & notice served on some years’ love
(or something like it), confident highspeed
mortality (no choice, not even purchase).
So that he watched the dusty rubbled bed,
those months, the engines ploughing up some years of him,
the furrows slowly merging in the flesh & mud,
the shrinking face, the swelling pools, bewildered,
waiting for clearance. Till the knot was tied,
black gravel rollered down, where the imperatives
run smoothly off for the horizon. In the house,
behind the window she put in out back, he sits
& sees remembered grass still springing underneath
the lucid wheels. He will not go,
not leave the stranded house; his livelihood,
his years, are razored down to this, eyes at this window.
Nowhere else; no choice.
rdw

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