Matthew Word Bain

and now we can see
the face of this old building
long ago closed up

and weathering in stages
wearing out paint and plywood

an oblique vantage
looking past an old storefront
and down this old street

what lurks around the corner?
not much on this January day

a long languishing trailer sinks
into the quicksand of time
as the hard pavement
beneath its feet
gives way
to the press of
gravity and steel
and long inattention
a storage unit cheaper
to keep than to haul away

screens without windows
these eyes see a cold grey world
throughout each winter

and yet hold visions of spring
as well as summer and fall

also tinged with grey…
make no mistake, however –
this lack of color

is not in these eyes but in
the gravel and the pavement

just how many trains
one can only imagine
for two centuries

might have passed along this line
just consider the stories

like a cuckoo clock
or a tractor trailer clock
announcing the hour

the world
paints a self portrait
a picture of a living landscape
in the limited color palette
of a grey January day
and I wander
through the studio
grateful to have the chance
to see the artist at work
behind the scenes
before me
and to find myself
animated by the very same
livingness that moves in everything
from my own random walk
to Brownian motion
in the air all around me
and those wandering stars
which so long ago prefigured
the anomalies of Kuhn
setting the stage
for a new
center
and now
as I wander
the open studio
I ponder the shift
from a sinister trance
to a trance that supports
a coincidence of opposites
and a living relationship
with this living world

like a boat in a dream
floating on grass
adrift
otherworldly
with gaping stern
and faded colors, listing
I can feel its yearning for water
in the realm of the waking
and the tug of the tide
in the green grass
of its dreams

in a dance, we are
snow pile, tree, and she and I
each one finds a place

each of them, in their own way
my next step help me to find

with eyes and eyelids
and its own tired dragon
one wise old building