Venn Diagram

coffee colored the rings were, the words
bleared over, sugary wet, corralled
in their neat columns, jumbled one atop
the other

intersecting to make a chain, ring upon
ring, binding the words, black upon white,
beneath them, the familiar dictionary

read out by rote each morning in staid
sentences--and will the circle
be unbroken?

........

He shows, with a flourish, the silver
rings which become one, then two, then
three, then one again, tossed to

the heavens above where they disappear,
finally, into black

.........

smoothing the paper out beneath the
coffee cups twinned and blue, above the fold,
remembering Kilroy and that last pair
of dry socks

as white smoke rises from the
chimney across the road, the
highway disappearing long past
squared wires of a screen to
keep things out, keep things in, the
errant flowerpot crashed to
muddy sherds upon the floor