Contained
After you have swum to the inland island
after you have toweled off with the giant leaf
and rolled in the black resin garment
and scaled the hill like a forgotten saint
and gained the pointed dwelling
after the bellrope brushes your face
one knot for every hesitation of your life
that ends that will end in a burnished bell
once you step back into the footprints
once your arms make a roof above your thoughts
once you are dangling from the rusted crucible
of every furious dissemblance you hath done
and the lake gathers round and glistens with the sound
that carries that turns that licks
the barren and forfeits all clamber and slays
the surfeit of the sun and winds time
to a tether and hooks it on your heart
what then, what then, will you have done?
And how and what should you presume? Exhume?
The coin hewn in half? And if you picked it up,
and began right there on the earthen floor
to scratch out your chance, your yin of a green
and, deeper, your gold, interminable dream?
And tyranny of riches kept
that flattens your thought to a mold?
Now bring on the keepers and the truck.
The packages, the alms.
Cough up your little night
and render your drop
now all the snug particulars are gone.