David Shapiro

Song for Another Envelope



The fatal exceptions occurred

without exception and not fatally.

They stole my throne from me:

it was a tree, or a tree

stump as they rotted it,

cut it to a chair,

democratic as a T

then sank it into the ground

and I forgot to take last snaps

of a serious mossy thing.

Fire at evening, or was it the

evening on fire?



Reader,

butterfly,

migrant drunk, ally,

unemployed luminosity,

mirror in the air, feather,

scrawny light--

You decide.