Green is the Orator by Sarah Gridley Page A

that said
footsteps
on the day’s clean floor—a flox’s
    violent blue—a word or two more valuable
    than those surrounding it or them
    because made of what we eventually are (that is the region
    a region expanding the accent inward)
    glass washes up soft
    in fields that are folds of waves for you
    without edges to see and weigh it lightly (you)
    so that
nearer to the heart
(for me
    to say it) is not coming or going but is
    the lasting dissolution made particular
    as sea glass in the whole blue
    distances I
    and you inhabit

Thicket Play
    I asked the sun to stay outside.
    Â Â Â Â I called its effort
disentangled
. I put the body
    there
as marker, held up as if in place of. Or else, a thing stooped
    down upon, and snapped.
    Pictured then as clasped inside.
    Claw paw hand: I made the body as mainly its branches.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â One branch I called the
childhood coffer
.
    Inside it were
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â the many reasons.

Honey Ants
    Northeast of Alice Springs, farther along the Darwin highway,
    a place was named Utopia prior to its settlement.
    It could be rhythm lies in expectation, and expectation, in memory.
    Gum tree, gum tree, no gum tree, gum tree.
    Alone again with ochre and a stretch of wall, we know whatever we follow
    will sometime come off-center. Sun and hope, dazzling and invisible.
    Our own acts
    of touching follow, feeling nothing we cannot alter
    by making it consciously so.

Recessive
    vertical shadow a rasping of drum
    gesso primer covering the grave
    motional the wooden panel
    under oils that would rest above it
    to gray the gold of fallout
    squareless in the circle’s presence

    rabbit skin glue
    for keeping dusts together
    I have thought the heart and cage
    trees through a window raised
    to yellow interest by October rain
    in relative speeds

    to a room’s chalk teachings
    respiratory hitches for the teacher
    shared area of jots
    shall we stick together in the black field
    widening diamonds of an elevator’s grate
    lift to disinhabited apartments

    runners the color of dying grass
    fraud of spy- & cheval glass
    the eye was once
    the mind for silver leaf
    was sylvan
    in the sixth sense
    where mind was once
    the absorbent primer

    brilliant in its prefiguration
    of moon
    though brittle though crabby
    and crackable
    on canvas more than
    it interrupts the shells

    it lends them room and seconds
    to circle and ascend
    the dark water we see through
    there and there
    when the crest thins the wave
    to outstretched liquid

    where the sea
    shells roll
    tilting at the one that stands
    for appearance
    skull of folded arms and legs
    in the cross section
    of hillside
    prince of all earth
    in their formal
    setting
    a thing
    for the mind
    to spot
    and follow

Sending Owls to Athens
    Redundancy redundancy.
    Â Â Â Moon of my collarbone long ago broken.
    Moon overlapping my look at the vascular. A dog-eared page says
    Neptune green
. A fourth type of song
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â is performed upon
    a cricket’s invasion of territory. Broken in
    the place of broken. Or nothing would argue my nervous system:
    grays in the grays of nephogram, ash tree’s flourish
    where the library steps.
    Â Â Â Â Â Wind in the color—
    there is no such thing. No color to color the color.

William James, Henry James
    Great gift of purple apples! The distant stars, the far-in sugars
    of their skins. With light in certain
    shades of the world,
autumn
of limited
    use in the world, I could go
    for a day
    in the word
canteen
.
    In the world outside
    I have yet to put in. It looks as though the bridges
    are standing in aquarelle. You know
propitious
    comes of
going-forward
. Where the horse in mind
    unfastens earth, fastens thirst
    to a treelike task.

Arethusa
    Sequent evening slopes inside, carries the sound of the caller. Distinctly
    out of sync, the double rapping of the carpenter frog, mating