Kenny Williams
Between the Clock and the Bed
Between the clock and the bed,
between the barn and the house,
in sight of tower and town,
all is as it should be.
The Black Forest is blue-green
and heaped with human hair,
the slopes with flowers so sweet
you could eat them right off the stalk.
The sky is such an embarrassment of blue—
not a single atom in sight!—
there’s absolutely nothing left
to learn about it, or observe,
least of all that a pair
of impossibly aged lovers
are lifting each other into it,
their flesh made wise
with the weightlessness of earth.
Willoughby Spit
I can’t tell the western
from the eastern
sky,
Orion from
the woman in
the chair.
That yacht, tonight,
strung with lights and hovering
at the rim of the abyss,
can’t tell port
from starboard, but.
It’s pulling
like a
what? for star
and port at once,
in heavens-chasing
lunacy and homeward-
turning love.