no one can possibly attend continuously
to an object that does not change
—william james
for example: sky. for example:
flame. or an icicle hanging from
a frigid gutter, the sea at rest.
even a child, sleeping, grows
tiresome, makes the looking eye
-lid droop. there are limits, after all,
to our attending, to how long
we can bend a knee before one
thing, genuflect. for example:
a flower, a spray of clover.
for example: a meadow, no matter
how lovely. or the lover
who in bed beside you rolls
closer, sighs, says god,
don’t you wish we could
stay like this forever?
Patrick Kindig is a PhD candidate at Indiana University, where he studies nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. He is the author of the micro-chapbook Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press 2016), and his poems have recently appeared in CutBank, Meridian, Muzzle, Columbia Journal Online, and other journals.