The Finder at his Desk

The things we spend too much time doing, in the interest of what we wish we were doing, or distracting from the uncomfortable truth that we're not doing it at all

I go discovering, strangely and with out much inclination
But I am even stranger than the way I discover
Having become lost, having forgotten what it is to find
remembering only that finding once was all that mattered
and so I go looking for how to look, looking for something to find

I go looking for the things others have found
go looking for others, to find out what they are looking for
and to see how they go about finding something to look for
and to look for what they've found, as if I could now find it myself
and maybe after long years of looking I will again desire to find
something

But for the most part I go sitting at my window while the
trouble-free thrushes and sparrows whistle and gargle
writing feather-and-air poems between one branch and the next
or the hawks and other raptors float in thermal raptures
make circles and ellipses- make themes and vary themes
eating the trouble-free thrushes and sparrows
leaving on the ground
craters of down
and discarded viscera
having been scared away by a dog or a hiker

With both lamps on though it's just after noon
denying the insistent phenomena of my periphery
an encroaching tide of glasses jars and mugs
beer cans with one or two dents in them and a soldier's little toe
restrained from the grave by the contour of its mouth,
an aluminum rim
too high to let the surface tension buckle
and release it into mine