What was that once as in
upon a time, as though our several
singularities warrant the cycles for which
we’ve chosen them, memory
and disclosure, a sudden tilt

in the planetary record exposed by cliff,
something not quite multiple, something
not so prolific as the championed spectrum?
Once I had returned to you,
once there were the deeds of clover

where once clover alone allowed
the more formal spinning of an instant,
a delicate finger on a match lit
in an otherwise perfectly useful darkness
indexed, if you will, by moth scent.

No longer, for what is this upon
if not each green carpet stretched
between winters and our profiles
wet in the ensuing melt? Disclosure
and memory, unwatered camels

moving at some distance still
forested and blackened, shapes lying
like scribbled plans on so deep
a surface as well-shine, your facade nowhere
and hair cast against the even farther air.

So it is, simply, that time returned to you
more than could a god of love, you holding
new chains and free to go, blessed
by an architect, savored by youth,
trumpeting at last the olifant

carved in the legend you are not yet
known at the center of. This is no
mistake, even after the earth
turned golden and each ear cocked
toward the next one: the very sound

attended us like snow received
on the tongues of waves, on the scattered
roofs where against so many shades
show well enough now the road
and all things that lie to be gathered.

Mike Perrow holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently lives in Medford, MA.
His poems have appeared in Volt, Willow Springs Review, The Alembic, The Hollins Critic, and elsewhere. His manuscript, Objects to Avoid While Searching for Comets, is in sporadic circulation.

 Michael

 Perrow