In Avoidance of Things Present

A little something to keep me from going insane while editing an article due Saturday.

I caught her dispersing a rain of sparks
from a freight train passing overhead,
and I began to think, “there will never be
black and white photographs of my face,
at least none to make any sense of me,
who I am, where we are, how we came
to find ourselves beneath these tracks.”

she will be as much a romantic vision
as the warts crusting my dry, left foot.

as the sun melting the large, wax seals
Allah has placed on my eyes and ears.

as the bills of sale for cranky donkeys
in the rubbish piles of Oxyrhynchus.

as Love that reels the planetary bodies.