A Poem By Zachary Pace

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

The Fool

I

Preceding memory traipsing this single
track, — each step a flat greenish note
released in payment to relentless rent — 
green path bisecting greener landscape.

II

Everywhere millimeters wound & wound
through those greenest degrees, beckoned
with promise of home. Autonomy cleft me
 — by mind, a man & by heart, a hound.

III

Pathetic obedience to searching, searching
the indeterminate sentence (here follow
there pace) (bright pedestrian, red left hand)
(rootless) (impatient) (exact) (adamant).

IV

I dreamt the voyage I (waking) dreaded,
& waking, waited — wanted — & waited without
rest for some counterpart, he who’d match
my cadence — , loyal to a fault, I entered

V

the city of electricity, narrowed the field
where a stranger emerged (unreachable
magnetic tempter) — his hands free his mind
free his movement precisely the shape

VI

of his freedom, his heartbeat insisting I am I am
 — the fool in me carried on in false calm
in false hope & — enamored — led him to this ledge
beyond which he can’t be coaxed to leap.

Zachary Pace lives in Brooklyn.

There’s a bunch more poems to read in the archives of The Poetry Section. You may contact the editor at [email protected].