Speaking Cities

Talking at the back of the room,
we say the word
Poetry
enough to turn every head.
They glance our way,
trying to see beyond
the dark end of the mind
to where we sit in the bronze decor
between boxes from Cuba and the mirror.

The word attracts them,
like some sparrow of incandescence
flitting from thought to thought
with a silver thread and needle,
sewing a logic as light.

Its trace, a pattern
fading in the air.


Russian Canadian American
What do these words mean
to three who can't leave Osaka?

Nothing: the way we recognize each other
in the mirror inside the zero.


Those old men of Zen
used to paint the universe in one stroke--
leaving a break in the continuous wall of form
so emptiness could slip in and out.

Tonight, we walked across the city,
from outside the Loop Line
to somewhere near its center.
We weren't reciting poetry.
We were speaking cities--
and other words for nothing--
into form.



by jerry gordon
for Slava and Michael
2.14.06