Reginald Shepherd

April 10, 1963 – September 10, 2008 / New York City

Park Apocrypha

Listened but couldn't hear
the subject hissing: looked up to
pages of stuttering rain (it tastes

green), warmer while the song decays
such weather full of precedent
A body made of water

dropped from a stratus
window mists over as it falls,
all hesitating sluice and flume

*

A water-worded book, muttering
foam of nouns, matte adjectives
and artifacts: torn pieces of

the visible, divisible by threes
A lot absorbed in rubble and the day's
debris litters the nocturne

where moon exercises absence's
discovery of outline, crevices
and missing parts of world

*

A private sea of trees, these inabilities
of yellow leaves all pigeon,
sparrow, wren or finch, plume down

dirty sidewalk, broken glass
of reason's syllabics, babble of
wind-bent grass, brush stammering

crushed bouquets of paper clouds
white night cross-hatched with stars
the rambling green rain unravels
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