Periodic Style

 

  by Joseph F. Keppler

 

 

I’m reality, simply reality.

The more I think about it though

The more I get confused.

Usually I’m real relaxed.

I’m confident I’m me,

And usually

More like you than I like me to be.

 

I am the way I am about you,

And I think, I think both

I am and I am not you.

 

You are you, and you are not who I am.

You and me, right?  There then.

 

Before I left, I gathered every bit of me up.

When I got back, I found nothing.

I’ll run into me sometime, I bet you.

It’s unusual to lose what you know is you.

  

Who will there be, to be there?

There will be no you.

There’ll be no me, no simply reality.

There’ll be no one

To see or be seen, to think or be thought.

 

A wing folds, a bird dives.

A throat’s cut, a bull faints.

A hurricane accelerates, a bough cracks.

You and I, we both die.

 

Brother, your welding gear,

Your steel-toed boots,

Your belted tools,

Your gob of keys heavy in your dungarees,

Too late neither right nor left in fog,

Seated in the middle,

You speed fast forward splashing

The lake you breathe sinking in a pickup.

 

Hard harvest to take about our life, our art,

To you I will to never neglect art.

I’m sorry, dear brother, so sorry,

I grieve your death and breathe your breath.

 

 

 

 

 

Joseph F. Keppler is a sculptor.  His poem, “Periodic Style,” is from his Nine Muses Books chapbook, All the While a Child Counting On Counting the Moon in Flight.