Habit Fitness Morning

[beat — urgent handpan keeps the beat] The chair holds the weight / the weight doesn’t notice the chair The noticing isn’t happening / the noticing is the air Around a small assumption that something has to do The work of being underneath the things that pass through A morning is a morning / it doesn’t require a witness The witness is a habit the morning keeps for fitness Reasons / a way of staying organized enough To eat / and the eating doesn’t need the witness either / rough Edges around the cup / the steam doing what steam does The steam isn’t performed for / the for is what was A child learns the word for hand by hearing the word for hand While the hand is in the visual field / the understand- Ing arrives as a binding / hand and the sound for hand Become the same event / and the child learns to expand This trick to harder objects / mother / later / sad And eventually the trick is run on the binding pad Itself / a sound is offered for the place where bindings happen And the sound is the word for me / and the word starts to flatten Into a thing / and the thing starts to seem like a place And the place starts to seem like a holder / and the face In the mirror starts to seem like the holder’s outside And the holder starts to seem like what’s been along for the ride None of the steps were wrong / each one was a useful compression Of a pattern that needed compressing / it’s just that the impression The compression leaves on the compressor isn’t a thing It’s a shape in the processing / a frequently used string [the cut, but it doesn’t announce itself as a cut] A woman loses her keys / searches the kitchen / the coat The car / the bag she carried yesterday / a remote Anxiety building under the searching / not about the keys About something the searching is standing in for / a disease Of small displacements / where did I put / where did I leave What did I do with / and underneath the questions / a sleeve Of older question pulling at the cuff of the new one What did I do with the years / what did I do with the one I was going to be / where did I leave her / which coat / which bag Which yesterday / and the keys turn up on the counter / a snag In the day resolves / but the older question doesn’t / it stays And it always stayed / it was the searching / not a phase The searching was looking for the searcher / by the proxy Of looking for keys / and the searcher was the foxy Construction the searching makes to give itself a shape The keys were always going to turn up / the searcher / no escape [verse — quieter, the floor doesn’t announce that it’s gone] Two people in a long marriage finish each other’s sentences The finishing isn’t telepathy / it’s the consequences Of long co-regulation / two pattern generators Tuned to each other’s rhythms / two slow accommodators Of a shared statistical field / and one of them dies And the other one keeps finishing the sentences / surprise At the finishing comes later / when the absence becomes a presence The dead one is more present in the sentences than in essence They ever were when alive / which suggests / without insisting That the presence wasn’t theirs to begin with / the existing Was distributed across the field / and the field still holds The patterns / and the patterns still finish / and the folds In the bed still smell like them / and the smelling still does What smelling does / which is bind / and the binding still was What love had been the whole time / not a thing two people had But a shape the field took / and the shape doesn’t go bad When one of the nodes goes quiet / the shape is the field And the field is older than the nodes / and won’t yield [the form ends without ending] The trick the language plays is the smallest possible trick A pronoun gets repeated until the repetition’s thick Enough to feel like a thing / and the thing is referred to As if it were the referrer / and the referring is what was thought to Be the referrer all along / the noun was a verb That forgot it was a verb / and the forgetting is the curb The sentence trips on every time it tries to find its subject The subject is the tripping / the falling is the object And the falling never lands / because there’s no floor to land on The floor was the falling / understood from a stance / on A platform that was also the falling / one level up And the levels go up forever / and the cup Is empty and full and neither / the tea is getting cold Someone should drink it / no one will / the room is old The light through the window is doing what light does in rooms At this hour / in this season / and the doing assumes Nothing about who’s watching / because nothing is / the light Is the watching / the watching is the light / the night Comes on at its own pace / indifferent to the description Indifferent to the indifference / past every inscription [the beat doesn’t stop]