from Spring Psalter

*



I leave you the ragged sky, once full of cloud & now
surrounded by dusk, my own stifled want & the neglected
vestiges that limit us, the vast machinery of what?
These are the many names of my sorry condition.

I leave you the ragged sky, once full of cloud & now.

Let me reconcile the angles; let them descend & sing!
Spontaneous song, discomfort, involuntary twitch—
the attacks growing slow on the inside. I spill blessings & hope.



*



Somewhere thunder sounds, what transparent
din, its loud echoes in the thinning clouds & somewhere

someone holds a piece of paper with my name written on it
& puts it away. A winter-dead cornfield

lies just beyond my back yard fence whether
I believe in it or not—so many elements

of landscape don't care about me at all. Fifteen ants
crawl all over the mint plant, each on its own leaf

& holding, thin ant parts so still you'd think
it was deeper into the year.



*



Heart, I submit to the program. Humble, I enter.
These are the indicative things. Proclaim, with me, the dawning!

My voice dissipates into hush & all the whiffs of light,
a twig half-sunk in spring mud & a Nature that permits.

Darling, darling: my voice is a branch that would reach.
Heart: I submit to the program, to attacks, to layer

upon layer of outer & still I am fragile, weak, subject.



*



Scattered, gone, kaput. But like a song, compelling, compulsive:
a piece of paper with my name written on it.

Every year it's the same damn thing:
long tally of causes & reasons dispersed, refuted.
If only my heart had knees.
A flimsy curtain separates
this from that, the time of ice or maybe the slow crawl
of spring ants over the garden plants, each on its own leaf.



*



Not. I leave you these things just as I must finally leave.
But, O, the dazzling nature of my transit, my exotic points.

My voice dissipates into hush & all the whiffs of light,
sun-thrown, hurtle into the ground.

You: a graceful passage from one something.
Spontaneous song, discomfort, involuntary twitch—

where the wires plug in. & what, then, might happen.
Wholly dissembled, unencumbered is my embarkation



*



This dull, red ache.
In the thinning clouds & somewhere someone

puts it all away. A winter-dead cornfield.

Rains come in & stop
just when you think

of pain & anguish, that same transience, the seasons
would fold;
Memory separate from imagination.



*



I hope to define. But who can understand the complex
that has gone trudging before. Determinant & co-determinant!
These are the many names of the sorry condition,
these are the indicative things! Proclaim, with me,
the dazzling nature of my transit, my exotic points!



*



Surrounded by dusk, my own stifled want & neglected
song, discomfort, involuntary twitch—

I leave you these things just as I must finally leave
you: a graceful passage from one something

to the next. Darling, even in this

there are attacks growing slow on the inside. I spill blessings
& hope but my voice dissipates into hush & whiffs of light.



*



It was the spring of getting-by, of starting-up, purged bodies

transient, changing, always holding on & then the fall,
If my heart had knees
they wouldn't bend. Long afternoons alone,
&, oh, it was the winter of disconnect, discord, the cordate

of pain & anguish, that same transience, the seasons
pinched & broken & pulled & emptied, the summer

all of this mattered a long time ago but didn't anymore.
It lies just beyond my back yard fence
to be felt.

It's constant.












"Spring Psalter" is one season from the book length work THE WONDERFUL YEARE. horse less press published another season, WINTER CONSTELLATIONS, as a chapbook in 2005. New work by Nate Pritts can be/will be seen in print from Gulf Coast, Conduit & Court Green & online at Past Simple, Keepgoing & Bedazzler. A new book, BIG CRISIS, is out from Forklift, Ink. He is also the editor & sole shareholder of H_NGM_N, an online journal of poetry, poetics, &c.






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