Three Poems

1. Last Code Talker

A sketch was submitted
We held it as if we knew

And we did know

As if forgetting
Were a lost pattern

As if the code had tapped us
On the shoulder

We knew it had found us

Sitting there reading
The last quarter of our lives

A line drawing cut into words

The same surface
Sinking in our hands



2. Dowsing

We quoted things
Phrases that turned out to be true

A test in response to our science
Nothing rejected or disclosed

We searched the underground
With a forked twig

Trying to answer the world
And the question of its indelible body

Unsure of the category
We looked for the encounter there

Pure departure, the inaudible
Thunder strung pole to pole

Still we searched, digging into
The droning pocket of our speech

Which was itself a voice



3. One Designated As Another

We drew from the roof
Beneath the worthless quarter of a moon

Rehearsal anchoring our action

Tumbled, faint, the nothing of
Echo introduced again

Each successive display
Buying its order as a grave plot

We followed the flow of its form
Wearing the air of rightness

A time that understood its people
By some insight or another

We were curious to know
About the birth of this view