lxxxxiii.

the crack in the night--
the light tears
over the peaks, later,

--is when to draw a breath.
during the day, history tangles
with history and the current,
moment, tangles and twists, and
fills to the banks.

put a breath in the tangle of reeds
by the edge of some other river,
near the peak by some other valley,
under the verge at some other field,

in the thick vegetation growing off
of the drainage, they hold

what you can't draw as the day is
passing, what you can't show in
the street or the hallway, to preserve

these things from what would confirm
its blindness, by violence, if necessary
the past is an entrance to an alley,

and the alleys run through the city
until they fall to brush, and ditch,
and levee--to gravel, to gully,
shadow and haze at the horizon, to
loading bays and wire fences
to alley and alleys, again,

the veins that run behind the face
of the world, can hold your breath
in their junctures--the undone future's
the entrance to an alley