Rich Ives
CAREFULLY WRAPPED FESTIVAL OF DISCOVERY

There was a sadness and hearts went in there
where it was waiting               a small boat on the riverriver of what’s next                 the rope you can’t see
rope with a private moon at the endthere was a consideration of smallness and it grewa hat enclosed certain structures of thinking               what it did to us was living in its
imaginary thimble              a hat enclosed inside itself
still room for a thought                                   the head wound round with it
the hat saving us from certain conclusions

there was an ancient winged accommodation             which flew inside
the sadness and attached itself                        to the rope and the river
and the moon at the end                      all at once like the private hat
and it could wait for a long time                     we knew that

there was a recognition of recovery and it left us
a private rope with certain privileges at the end

the ones who were sad enclosed certain structures of acceptance
and the rope was waiting                    wound round the boat like a thought
knotted in its ancient whispers                       thimbled out to us
drifting endlessly on the private stream where you entered

a small boat on the river                      at the end of a rope
a rope that was waiting to become a rope

a private moon at the end of a discovery        holding what we knew
there was a consideration of smallness and it grew

Rich Ives is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander and the 2012 winner of the Creative Nonfiction Prize from Thin Air magazine. His book of days, Tunneling to the Moon, is currently being serialized with a work per day appearing for all of 2013 athttp://silencedpress.com.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #2.