Meadow of matchsticks,
            soon to be rekindled
            by Spring the incendiary.

            The exact flame of your blossoms
            will ignite the passions
            happily sapped by time--

            Dripdrop their excess went
            and now miners' hats
            light up like love before

            your vein, the frame of which
            is there to depict the drift,
            the waste when I painted

            all the review copies
            they sent me. But those books
            open to polar pages where you

            and I weigh the ends of this
            teeter totem down, you
            at the head and nadir me;

            where postmortem is
            the aura of self-portrait,
            its other half regained at last.


Copyright © Bill Knott, 2000.  All Rights Reserved.