Pool

I

The break - EXPLOSION - Spheres in motion bust-
ing free from their triangle-nucleus,
Empowered blurs, obeying higher laws
of action and reaction, without pause
collide and bank, reverse and finally slow
from streaks to stripes and solids, numbers show,
and one man reckons the events he's caused
on a Friday evening in the pool hall.

The man is hustling billiards for fortune.
To him these balls are sacred numbered runes.
He reads the way they lie after the break.
Surveying eye - the crucial space from bank
to ball to pocket. Calculating brow -
the right amount of English to endow
upon the cue in its trajectory.
He knows the art of reading what could be.


II

But what could be is not what is and, save
what will be when again the poolshark waves
his chalky wand and conjures these dull globes
to chaos, what is now is this. Zero
tension, no relation, thirteen rounded
objects float at random in a bounded
sea of felt. This is how things really are.
For example, if you take a picture

of the hustler, arm-tattooed and sideburned,
an oracle will not develop. Words
cannot change reality. A thousand 
words rattle like dry bones in Delphic sand.

III

He whips the wrists that loose the staff and - CRACK -
The universe explodes from white and black
to rainbow fire. He reads, and reckons all.
God of four corners. Seer of the pool hall.