Central Standard Time

Someone a little sad,

absentminded maybe, is winding

up our crickets; the butterflies,

threads in a dewy spiderweb,

in twilight spread: then locked

inside the dark

for the infinity

of till tomorrow-not even a hackle

of yesterday's gaudy plumage

in sight-

yet a sparrow, brawny

spinet of the wind, weaves

a Clever pencil-line in and out

the tick and tock, around

the evening,

much as scenery

frames in the raveling of clock,

the saffron deepened by the dark

or disaster stuck into the tear-

vased look:

the owls willing

either way: the rabbits too,

hopping through the hoots,

a moon or fear flaming on their

rounded wick of eye.

T. Weiss

Each

a center for those who, focusing,

breathe cricket, ant, or spider

air-beginning and ending

as your travel speeds.

I have

found my Archimedes gratified,

found my Archimedes here,

the lever love;

east you've given

me and west, yesterday's bawdy

plumage rooted as the moon, rooted

as love's central air,

a time to set

my emotions by and the crickets

of my greenfield-towered fears;

no quarreling in nature:

early-in-the-crocuses can be

the center, or the carnation, bull-

eyed center, shriveling like an old

face, gerontion,

while the crickets,

telegraphic over the nimble wires

of night, dwindle into the tired

winding of a turnip.

T. Weiss