The glass has fallen.
Several last bees
drinking from the tap.
They too, packing,
turning in, to hive and family
within the wax.
I feel the diaphragm
shift with air, the two-pointed needle,
lodestone, lobestone, settle
to one direction.
But for all this,
I am changeling, many minded:
Consciousness a town or family
made of wax.
I sought
likenesses, finding everywhere
errors that flattered or shamed.
All of them appropriate,
down to the show of blood and worry.
Image at a time,
small absolutions.
Leaving now, I pack cases
with clothes themselves
wearing thin
smell of self, in this building
clad with weatherboard.
Yet there persists
a vanity that words, states
of mind, are absorbed somewhere
(in the wood, in cloth)
and perform, after leaving
their masquerades … of us.
No. Leave it.
