NO NAMES, by Thom Donovan

—with Arnold Kemp,

[after Julie Ault’s Macho Man, Tell It To My Heart]

The winter sun making

All the books yellow, pale

Lit up in praise of just

How they look seeing their

Spines, reading them, is like

Having them, like I am

Having you, no names only

The way things are, how they

Sit there in a different sun

Light is all I see

We are all wall, who

Among the makers do you

Mourn, who you have known,

How could I miss those

Two light bulbs, Arnold points

Them out, why don’t people

Hang bags of marbles

On walls like that more often

Mystical like all object-hood

Holds us in a kind of sorcery,

You explain how glass makes

The rich black of the original

Photograph more bluish and

I swear whoever collected

All these things is a Taurus

Maybe a Scorpio, Julie Ault rolling

Into Portland and after having

Dinner at a local bar claims she

Will come there every

Night for the rest of her visit,

Everything beautiful comes

About through habit, friendship,

And the grace we cultivate

In ritual, and daily awareness

When memory no longer

Pains us, when we arrange

The things we have loved

Only then do the dead

Dwell in us, the walls enclose

This feeling so there can be love—

O, to recognize things

Without their names, to

Recall a flux

We were born into.

http://whof.blogspot.com/2014/02/for-arnold.html