John Wilkinson

Amours de Voyage


One was wax, one silk, one
metrically fluttered,
their moth-eaten slips shrunk,
wound round a rattly drum,
made sprightly round or
mount still unenclosed,
in common usage fungible:

insects corrugate my tongue,
eyes tickle, pollen, dust,
micro-organisms, leaf
hoppers compromise
the project, mess the article,
you're breaking up, honestly
I can't hear or see a thing.

Delegates may disregard
the fountain but they swig
each their own water, trudge
the slippery slope to
inspect a concrete channel
& its coping, its sluggish
sinus bandaged tight in fire:

I'd been feeling wound up,
dug for gold but cut
worms aspirating earth,
sought autochthonous spirit.
Rains refresh the earth
before a cistern gulped or
ever stake was wagered,

small rain, pollen, round
on round of infiltrators
hissing steamy wastefulness,
difficult to catch right,
flux above my torpid drum.
This inky pacifical finger,
how shall it break the earth?