Revisionist Poetry – “Lyrical ” – Discussions #2, v.3

They rise from kiln and weather, clay and slow astonishment,
three figures cupped in light like questions held against a palm.
One breathes in quick syllables—peppered sparks that catch the dusk—
“Remember,” it murmurs, “the maps, the names, the children’s rooms.”
The second measures its words as if weighing bread, soft and exact:
“Count what we owe, then cut away what won’t fit the table.”
Between them the third is a quiet reef, a shoulder for the wind;
its silence hums—low, ocean-deep—and somehow gathers sense.

Around their feet the city knits itself: footsteps, late radio,
a dog sniffing the edge of the plaza, a bicycle that sings.
They argue in fragments—old broadcasts, a cracked proclamation—
then fold those shards into poems that refuse to be resolved.
Sparrows take counsel on their shoulders; sunlight carves their cheeks.
A child lingers, steals a coin of attention, leaves a scrap of paper—
a drawing, a crooked house, a name that wants to be held.
The statues lean (or the light leans); the scrap flutters like a small yes.

Not thunder, only the slow work: memory pressed into clay,
a patience that will not be hurried, a tenderness that holds.
Art here is not a banner but a breath that asks us to pause—
to notice the small green stubbornness through the paving stone.
And maybe that pause is plenty: a beginning worn on the palm,
the soft insistence of one hand stopping another from walking.