Outer Circle

poem #115

photo by redacted

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They’re all I see
Black helicopters
Fall on me
Black helicopter
-Matthew Good

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Not even these occultists
that you hear so much about—
with their diagrams and mutilations,
island temples, houses in the Hamptons—
can square the bloody circles
of the Earth, and though they try,
I keep my squinty eye upon them.

I circle my square wagons,
softly, with an iron rod, just like
my father taught me. All, he knew,
was motion. All is motion!
There’s no changing that,
and this is everything: the hems
of my clothing, darkened from the dust.

I am forever falling over,
and wish I could afford a horse–
a white one like the mare 
my brother and I rode in circles, 
then the forest, then the road. 

I remember thinking it was us 
against the cars, against slow herds
of Mennonites in dark, Old Order wagons;
against the tractors and the world,

its four cardinal directions;
against the unlikely theory 
of its all-surpassing roundness.
Surely no force in heaven,
nor in the engines of the Earth,
could move so much so subtly
as to fold it back into itself?

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