Holding Perspective

"What do you mean, by 'Holding Perspective',

and on whose authority are you here?

Perhaps they—who painted a setting sky

in a box black-empty

lest the fragile blue figures

of this bouquet of barbed blooms

lay alone at its base-

unknowingly guide my hand to hold this pen.

Will you write to them?

Perhaps you could be less

false as you fail to

live this stranger's life

and ask his

permission for which

direction to move this pen.

And what of this day?

Perhaps this is simply our experience together—

a memory as

         as a yellow flower

in a pond;

that black-empty box on my shelf, full of folded words,

all of which are no longer to be read by this pen.

What shall we say?

They will not listen.