There was the summer, summer’s capabilities, its size, how we forgot ourselves
                       in its demonstrations, square light over the stone walls, hands tied

                                                                                to action all in the periphery
until we pulled them together like the flat wind that blew across the audience

and the swimming pool, the vast fields
                                  and their downed machinery.

What have I brought to myself that I didn’t even see—
                                                                     some nights a wet silence, some

a percentage remaining?
Every song plays right through its secret, through its last chance,

and we sit in our chemical radiance
                                    bristling with effects, our set of reasons gone sweet and dear,

the river turned to gold, the gold in the late light,
all the rhymes in our mouths

in dispute.