Tim Bradford
Scope
The eye of the classroom building
is a round window, a rifle scope,
a periscope set beneath the roof’s ridge
in red bricks wet with sunlight under
an ocean of October atmosphere. The pressure
of engines starting, students,
horny or heartbroken, and illegal
parking will not break the hull
of the building as it glides,
near noiselessly,
through the exhalations,
inhalations, of warm and
cold fronts. The climate of depth,
the brain and what
it won't say, bricks,
vents and windows.
We enter the submarine
for classes of a set duration.
Then, release.
*
A young woman in tight slacks
with a faux snakeskin print cuts
down the library steps toward
the Union. A young man
watches her cross the space
between buildings
in the late afternoon light.
He thinks of an orange, Picasso's
blue period, how they could never
get along with him allergic to nail polish,
fearful of snakes and polyester.
Still, he wonders whom she loves.
*
A flock of heron-like birds
heads south. The ones in back
rotate to the front of the loose
arrow, silently sharing the work
as they go. Another man
stops and looks up too. “Too bad I
don't have my gun," he says
like it’s funny, then walks off.
The bells
ringing in the tower
are recorded.
*
I fear there’s not much to see here.
We could leave the paper blank
and call it #9 in Light Gouache,
but still the retina would register
subtle shifts of light, shadow,
and last night’s dream of an overdue
library book. Of course, there is
no there there, but there is, always,
something to be seen. Trees
are good for wonderment over
intricacy—each leaf
with a stem, each stem attached
to a branch, every branch flowing
back to the trunk and finally,
down into the soil, a source of dignity.
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