Max Ritvo

 The Senses

 

Everything feels so good to me:

my wool hat,

the cocoon of dryness in my throat.
 

The sound of burning vegetables

is like a quiet, clean man folding sheets.
 

But I keep having thoughts—

this thought always holding at bay the next thought

until it sours into yet
 

another picture of dissatisfaction,

that loves to be thought,
 

another pear, ugly

as the head

of a man who is thinking.
 

I thought my next thought would be a vision of my suffering;

I thought I would understand the yellow lightning in a painted storm—

the crucial way it disappears

when I imagine myself flung

head-long into the painting.
 

Instead I have this picture of dissatisfaction,

the thought not rising, but splitting in half

on the unanswered question of lightning,
 

my mind

like a black glove

that you mistake for a man

in the middle of a blizzar