Blood, that striking red pause
in a day’s work, not at home,
not with her, not even on a wheel
with play, bead surprising
as sunlight, for it
a Buick dealer might be assassinated
during commercial taping,
blood splattered on an illusion.

He becomes a multiple addict
who misses the feel of it, blanched
verdure becomes him till Springtime
because there’s no time like the present
but there is a leaf blood-red
in Autumn that resembles him and it
though his work resembles nothing.

Freedom invisible as each morning’s
beard of light is so far away
there from him he pulses
just under the skin
as if he were going to live forever,

but when he bleeds a heron
in his heart’s inestimable fathoms
stirs as in a mistflamed bayou
so near the bus window
he could call or tap,
distract her marble eyes for an instant
reflecting him and green water.

A church is a human place
complex as an eye
where he may silently disavow
highest ceilings or that secret wish
to bury his hands in bread,
yet entering and leaving he will kneel
as if one who understands
were as silently lingering in wood,
stone, and glass as he
to be translated into an identical labor,

so he will leave his hand
alone a moment with sweet scallions,
let his knife score a newt’s frail gill
where fingertip has strayed
casually along the cuttingboard’s grain,
he will whisper a dark expletive of
blood or simply go outside
tasting it, listening for cicadas.