okey-panky
Stealing Someone’s Favorite Word
Poems by Bill Carty

Stealing Someone’s Favorite Word
Troublesome Pilot
I guess the wind
did it
or age
much goes
sideways
with age
comfort becomes
that certain
I-know-not-what
the digital
model augurs
effects of sea-rise
on the least tern
the pattern
of the great
auk egg
is gone
tides won’t
watch us
until we look
away
the drought-
stricken
marched in the arroyo
waving blue
sheets
the newscasters
laughed
because it snowed
that summer
most people occupying
the park
appeared to be
on assignment
“troublesome pilot”
you wrote
on the stove
when you smoked
the green puff
was a fuse
you sparked
in opposition
to death
you left carrying
whatever
would fit
in your pockets
I was spinning
lettuce
I hoped
time moved
in a circuit
as science has
predicted
future depth
of the mean
fortis beak
as many vintage
styles wait
at the light
for permission
to cross from here
the idea of wilderness
as circumscribed zone
it seems
embarrassingly
American
not to speak of
the love we shed
each snakeskin
nailed to the beam.

Apocrypha
A pilot carried us through night
and we arrived as late revelers
mingled with those who slept
where they weren’t supposed to
sleep. Tired and thus more given
to indiscriminate attraction,
I fall for the Caravaggio hanging
nearest: Judith traded
sackcloth for gown, wooed then
dispatched besotted Holofernes,
and though she’s jewel-less,
the joke works: he’s a victim
of fashion. Poor Holofernes,
never to see the morning’s
pigeons, the market draped
with fog until it isn’t — suddenly,
the vendor’s dog is shining,
sun doubles on its bare patch
of skin. Hit with light like that,
what creature wouldn’t glow
from the inside out. And what
landscape, now clothed, wasn’t
raised in the wild. Our ticket
permits re-entry from now until
the weekend. Beyond this, two
routes determine our revision.
The first reflects the past;
its concerns are familiar. The other
covets fashion. The future.
What will people wear then?