This tower is an excavated well
where robed scholiasts
crank a windlass.

*

A bucket ascends from the abandoned benthos
bearing the heavy reflection of their peering.

*

Is this tower the chanter
of the sky’s pipes, or the dry syrinx
of the dead bird of the sky?

*

Flutelike,
this tower is a tipped-up lava tube
exposed by erosion.

*

The tone windblown
over the hole
is a mouse on the snow of the spine.

—

Richard Kenney was born in Glens Falls, New York, in 1948 and is the author of five books of poetry: The Evolution of the Flightless Bird, Orrery, The Invention of the Zero, The One-Strand River, and Terminator. In 1987 he received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently professor of English at the University of Washington and lives with his family in Port Townsend, Washington.