3.

And now I am writing, in a smaller book.

But you can’t read it, and I will not talk about it yet.

And if my voice has made it to you, my small

persistent chirping, a cicada near an airport

—poets, we are happy with the dull clunk-clink

of the coin you choose to drop into the busker’s

open case, playing her feather touch

on gravity-tight strings of a red guitar

on the age scratched pavements of LA.

Although I am unsure if the municipality

allows street performers, I picture you,

on the footpath with the handprints

and shoe indents, the gold edged stars

set with a ground crystal of cement

—the telling is truer than the thing told,

and a man will beg and a woman will go off

in a huff and regret it all her life—

but you know that isn’t entirely true,

it can also play out opposite, or two

positive poles and a current won’t flow,

in the all day and night noise, the roaring

large transmission of industry, more than

poetry will ever achieve, the telling is truer

than what is being told. I am creating cavities

inside persistent noise to appreciate the quiets of poetry.