Tjugonionde augusti

 Tea Cups, 1914

 Juan Gris 

Mist Valley

 At the end of August, when all

The letters of the alphabet are waiting,

You drop a teabag in a cup.

The same few letters making many different words,

The same words meaning different things.

Often you’ve rearranged them on the surface of the fridge.

Without the surface

They’re repulsed by one another.

Here are the letters.  

The tea is in your cup.

At the end of August, the mind

Is neither the pokeweed piercing the grass 

Nor the grass itself.  

As Tony Cook says in The Biology of Terrestrial Mollusks

The right thing to do is nothing, the place

A place of concealment,

And the time as often as possible.

                               James Longenbach