At Bay

Coral-bells purpled the fallen sycamore leaves, dead, the dead 
versus those who attempted death, versus those who effectively 
fashioned out of such attempts a style akin to electric guitar 
shimmer swelling and unswelling like starlings when they first 

lift off, or like stars when, from their fixed sway, they come 
suddenly loose, any man letting at last go of a career spent 
swallowing—trying to—catastrophe’s jewel-studded tail, un-
swallowable, because   

                                    holy, in the way of fanfare, its gift for 
persuasion, how it can make of what’s ordinary, and therefore 
flawed of course, a thing that’s holy, for a time it seemed so, 
didn’t restlessness seem to be, little god of making, no less 

impossible in the end than any of the gods, where’s the holiness, 
they sleep never, they tire infrequently, to be tired bores them, 
distraction refined by damage would be their drug of choice 
hands down, if they could choose, even they don’t get to.