Inconcinnity

Nothing recedes like the seasons. The geese
On the sandbar in the temporary
Middle of a stream pattern old enough

To have sawed through a million years of stone
Breathe dragonish atmospheres and repeat
Their honking mad narratives of return

To palmier times in balmier climes,
Except that geese do not narrate narratives,
They dance them, and even then not as rites

But as patterns older than most rivers.
It's not a lack of words should worry them.
Words are not the stories storehoused in them

Any more than bricks are architecture.
Words are fripperies flippant poets make
Portents by showcasing them like stacked dolls

With brick-red lips painted on porcelain smiles
To smirk of universal betrayal
Artifice makes of our physical need

To sink, to cut, to embody pure want,
To keep embodying all the way down.
Oh what should it mean if it means nothing?