Junkyard

… The serpent didn’t hiss

     to Adam and Eve, “Hide your nakedness!”

     He wore his best suit, and whispered, “Look at this!”

Eyes closed, I drift amid their resonant sibilance, soft hiss and crackle in the tide wash, ubiquitous underwater, a buzz like static, or static electricity—but not mechanical—organic and musical, metallic as casino muzak, piles change raked together, a handful of pennies down a child’s slide.

& diamonds roped like a noose around throats of harbors beneath

… shot through a hole, and everything we know

goes in there, where it feeds a blaze.

But time is tied to the wrist

Or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

The woman looks up from her book.

The man takes a sip of his drink.

Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird

then another, cries of joy or warning—

it passes the time to wonder which.