Paradise
Andy Stallings
Every thought’s “been
thought” by the time you
think it. A series of signs that
leads one not to a town
or a pier, but to a condition
of grace. And the table, soft
beneath my wrist, does not
disagree. Music of multiple
harmonies and rhythms from
a countryside that knows its
accordion and its dance. She
walks through a vineyard
slowly, toward a dirt road
scattered with stones and
ceramic shards. Such a still,
it must be a mirror, or a
mire. It isn’t nothing, it’s not
dramatic, people living their
lives as simulacra, weather
shifting, movement caught by
the eye but barely, no
resolution of plot. A mind is
a pattern of habits. There is
no end to the end of beauty.