HEART THREAD 119 & 120

119.

I lag behind the utmost grammar

the truck squeals out when it backs
up

lost without prepositions if no
angels were

the operators do not believe in their
machines

a Vatican of leaks inside your
cellphone

but you don’t believe me when I call

because calling is its own thing,
calling is God

and you always think I have some
other motive

I have no motive I am motive I am
mind

so make room for me in the caravan

across the Sahel because I am also
salt

a word in your mother’s mouth you
hear in dream.

120.

Seminivores all over beaks and tiny
talons

when you see a bird in flight in
truth it’s flying through you

the hollow places in your
close-packed chest his fly-zone

so hurried and so gone by, a clifftop romance

the pale-eyed ghost sits on the
inspector’s lap

left alone the little dog howls
harrow harrow

moon phase sundial water from the
rock

endless embassies of birds at sunset
crisis

they go so fast no one knows where no
boasting

and if the mind be separate from the
brain how wise they are

and we too with our fidgets of the
flesh

inferring trajectories that lead
beyond the real.

ROBERT
KELLY