Brian Teare

THREE POEMS

If there is a bare spot on the ground the best possible weed for that environment will grow.

      public health clinic

      squeaky cheap chair



      I open the book

      and Lao Tzu says



      "knowing how to

      endure is wisdom"

                             patient at root means

      each word turns flat   to suffer its definition

      and grainy anxiety	 		

                             both "longsuffering"

      taints my waiting      and "one undergoing



                             medical treatment"

                             a fourteenth century 

               *	

                             Christian word 

                             "Studie to be pacient

			

                             in suffring" counsels

      Jesse the phlebotomist De Imitatione Christi

      needs only two sticks

                             where "study" means

      then the five vials    "seek to be helpful"

      one by one grow warm 	

						 	

      an eye's run of rhymes

      ruby beauty rutilant



      I leave the clinic dizzy 

      in the crook of my arm 



      gauze and two band-aids 

      the book of wisdom







	                                                        for Kerri Webster

We think that at last our feet are on the right path and we will not falter or fail.

	

    sometimes I feel 

    very why me about it





    very Christian I mean 

    I'm convinced

                                for weeks returning

                                to one book as if

    I believe suffering

    interpreted correctly 			

                                to make a medicine

                                of its vocabulary

    could be really useful



                                while I wait I read

           *                    as if a certain diction



								

                                could help only if 

    in On Light I read          I've made it a charm

    Matter cannot be

		

    emptied of form;           through continual use	

    form is light itself.			

 	



    at first it seemed 

    awful to be ill 





    without purpose     

    now I have lumen     





    enough to have 

    nothing and that

Somebody's got to sit down and really want it.

           everybody is born after eating lunch

       in the same condition I feel so sleepy





a little figure with a sword I have this mind

     I thought we were going from present to future







 to cut our way through life no joy       no sorrow

      we were going to do it one thousand three hundred nights







				

					



                                           –after Agnes Martin and Po Chü-i

A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the American Antiquarian Society, Brian Teare is the author of The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map, and Pleasure, as well as the chapbooks Pilgrim, Transcendental Grammar Crown and h. His most recent writing concerns embodied and medicalized consciousness and addresses both the symptoms of and treatments for gouty rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease, and multiple food sensitivities. An assistant Professor at Temple University, he lives in Philadelphia,where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.