after looking long at Joseph Cornell’s Untitled assemblage (“The Hotel Eden”)
take the center
out of the spiral, it is
still a spiral
*
this list
of things to do—
not one word legible
*
after you set me free
holding my own leash
between my teeth
*
directions to Eden—
! but the starting point
has been rubbed away
*
inside a world
another world with another
world inside
*
waiting for the world to tip,
this motionless yellow ball
*
what if the frame
just fell off, how might we
see each other then
*
a jar full of unidentified things—
shall we open it?
*
so may places for the eye to land
so many places to gather dust
so little impulse to dust them
*
where would we be
without the diagonal—
one boring box after another
*
it will never fly away,
this green bird, still watching
the spring that will never
be sprung
*
perhaps this bird knows
what I have been trying to learn
there is nowhere
but here
to arrive