Return To Smallness, The Observations {i} Poem by Desmond Kon

{spring and its purple pollen}
{hear the shop, its soft opening}
{archivist on his way to work}

windmill turning into sunflower decisions
made for it, partial circumferences, larger
like open receptions and niceness, palaver

it accompanies the rich, an escorted turning
pointed thunder like turbines, like hurricane
fans ready to spin more myths, daubed gold

him but a returning pilgrim, pencil outline
begging the tailspin, a quartered golgotha
never seen anyone so calming, sanded in

{feet and centuries under us}

plain butterspread of buttercup tastes sweet
even in these things, freedom wills its run
me scaling a square tract, its saffron field




Author's note:

An earlier version of this poem appeared in The Bend, a literary journal published by the University of Notre Dame.