From the Fishouse

If you had
a rock in a sling, a tangent is
what would happen if you let it fly.

Death, were you what my grandfather heard
in those last years
or where his hearing went, in place of?
Can’t hear us now, pop, earth shot deep:
six feet of dirt in your ear.

We place stones to show we had been here,
fragile pyramidal pile, quiet
set not to disturb
what they hold
past down.
Primitive. Better a circle
to entrance.

If earth were to let you
be, and the sun, all that is
gravity to you (which is all),
that would be a tangent.
An aside of what is, a hypothetical line going nowhere
hearing can follow.

O
giant untranscience, what are we
to move through
you? Strike through, or glance
even thusly?
O
Primitive.

If I above this settling mound
whistled hard, round
like a robin
like my grandfather did for boy-me
through what sadness is to
what am I and the robin am,
let loose off my circumference
and touched in passing his,
that would be a tangent.
That would be song
like the song you don’t hear or sing
but by not listening.

Come, come around, o
giant, (giant who is now
my grandfather, whose circumference
is now shared his), if you follow me
I’ll follow you,
each smaller than thought, as we once were,
stones around his head like gravity
of thought could order anything
into company not memory,
speaking the words I know
so well they spin in my ears
I no longer hear.