Sincerity

That word again, haunting Coleridge

like a hellhound, rolling like a dislodged boulder.

I mean, crushing all.

There was perhaps sincerity in the kingfisher

perched on the concrete edge

of the artificial pond, the reedy stalks

gray with frost, and distantly the pluck-pluck

of the local woodpecker. There was our furniture,

the sublime that remained slime,

the fluff-headed mergansers cruising still waters,

ever on the make. I saw everything,

I thought. Not the hours longing

for the blunt knife of her gaze. Not the haze

of philosophy, or millefiori, for that. Ah, ah.

Once the “silent majority” meant the dead.