Mark Dow
WATER MEASURES
Pentameter Water

The separations that the ocean is

The sounds join to each other in between

Sea separates itself itself itself

Lap simultaneous sound overlaps

The separation is continuous

Composite tongues translucent murmuring

The repetition's bound to make it stop

Mouth sounds incommensurate with sea's

Eventually and far away from here

The folds unfold their thoughts of wash & white

Sounds in the mind, sounds of the mind, in, of

In of, in of, in of, in of, in of

Invite inside invite inside inside

Extensive rooms of silent afterwards

The fear, the sounds, the love, made of same things

Inside the sound one hears the sound's outside

The repetition means that there is time

The vanished in between was never there

And any word is only partly sound

Says not I am but not I am but not

Round flatnesses surround the flats of sound

Or turned around to face what had been gone

Each cradled softly softly takes the hand



Tetrameter Water

And shift and slip and swell contained

And slip inside shift self-contained

Shift-swell unswell the belly's pull

Enveloped swollen rising pulled

Unspilled edge-shift white-blurred blue

And flat swell roll swell foam wash and

And air at where lace billows light

Light blue light dark white yellow light

Slipped swollen edge enveloped hid

Or blur and shifted edge and flash

The clarity and blur were one

And farther out and closer in

Tight hydrogen and oxygen

Held fast and loose and two and one

Drift us in the mind we're in

From closer out and farther in

Which same are same are soft and sharp

Relentlessly relaxed and hard

And blurred and clear and shifted one



Trimeter Water

Or rounded hears itself
Swept under endlessness
Said said's all said it says
Says being's being said
Shouts whispers inward ear
The verge of form of word
A fuller wordlessness
Says under over forms
All motions everywhere
All soft arrays of sound
Before sound's formed and forms
Some better loneliness
A roundedness full heard
Where from from where where from


Water Water

Edge curve word blur
Longitude swells
Collapses lapse
Or lap and laps
Said what said when
And whisper toward
What wants to form
The form itself
What wants itself
To form itself
Slap overlaps
Blurred lattice light
Ridged clarified
wa wa wa ter
Withdraw far part
Flattened deeper
Watersound is
water water
wa'er wa'er
watered water
ter wa ter wa
wa wa ter ter


Water

Wait to
Take her
Liquid
Changed her
Rounder
Downed up
Flat song
Upped up
Surfaced
Around
All filled's
All here's
All gone
Or are
Or are