2 of 3 Poems I have heard Len read beautifully | A. Hirsh

Folding Star

(a star rising at folding time;

an evening star)

My book as it lapses into the bath

unminded, relaxes,

and now the stitches give, and the pages

petal and fan

as though it were being eased of some pain:

of someone's pain

it had not known of. Soon the ink,

diluted, trickles

out with the slurry of cooling bathwater

prattling down

through a succession of pipes

to pool somewhere,

too cold now to bathe in, somewhere outside

where the sheep are gathering

past their bedtime—pausing to drink

and drinking too much.

Above them an apoplectic star

turns on itself:

once and again, quarto, octavo,

impressively dense.

The sheep talk freely in the dark.

The foundering shallows.

O I have taken too little care of

care of this.

—Jeff Dolven