Invisible Years

Painting by Elke Henning


invisible years


chickadees in cedars
winter a boy in
short sleeves
he doesn’t
dial the day

she strings a tile of suet to
a bare twig yearning yes
yes a gypsy choir:
fat & very
seed full

a poet shaves the wood
with its blue ice tongue
or how Italo Calvino
whets the world
with a large of

women: his breath
sharp as the dog
who has eaten
the last
moon

o her innocent eyes
painting mornings
cold with bowls
of fresh milk
buttered

toast & who
uncovers
his long
tide—
a boy

steals a cherry
wand—the girl naked
who sees the cedars felled
& he draws a line in the sand &
fish like silver thumbs jump up into

his mouth & she sings slowly into the smoke of
a ghost an old man carrying the crown
of Kublai Khan
his fingers on fire & a gown of big eyes—
the stars—invisible years—brighter & far
& someone who remembers where
she named the boy in the silence
of all those hills;

the invisible years spent to get to this word


Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry