For Jason Thibodeau

The nothing of the jug
The nothing of the window
Are said to make the window and the jug

The scar beneath his chin
Where at the age of five
He struck the side of the swimming pool

The more abstract concavity
Evident in the remodelling
Of the jugular foramen

The residence elsewhere of the father
Occasioned by his career
In some distant city

The baleful knowledge
Of a million prohibitions
Against for example self-pity

The Tables of the Law
The recipes for self-improvement
Hiatus in the manuscript

How would it be if scavengers
Never dismembered the corpse
Saprophytes from Arlington to Thermopylae

Niagara the Grand Canyon
The ordinary sunset
Scooping beauty from decline and fall

Words color the interstices
Mark the dim fringes
And never fill them full