SONG

Birds distributed
in sound, the
words that could
have been their
finish still pinned
to the singing
interval’s periphery.
Withheld they
look for me, which
is to say they
gaze on our
behalf. Pause, stay
unresolved, they
say, but press
these alveolar edges
as firmly as
tone and touch allow.

DAYDREAM

Hammer on beam on a weekend morning.
Breath like wood—huff—punctum
in the still air’s box. Among
the many such points possible, one
can dwell like sense embodied, can
believe simultaneously a thought
will survive its concatenation.

Mark Truscott's third book, Branches, won the inaugural Nelson Ball Prize. Newer poems appear in Fiddlehead, Grain, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and Oversound. A chapbook, Rain, came out from Knife | Fork | Book last year.