The Finger

84 patrick morrissey THE FINGER Of the particular densities of an afternoon, there’s little I can tell. A student wants the definition of contingency and I point with my finger in space as if it were a point in time, as if to say contingency is this, but then ••• Each opening lid ladles some world into the socket, but which conjunction best attends the verb to see: and or but? This and this. Now but now. One and / one, two, / three. He was one but of two. I will close both eyes and stop talking. Let me touch you there and here and here. ••• CRSUM09 poetry.indd 84 5/22/2009 12:37:03 PM 85 What do you do, what do you say—to make the circle, intensively, the form of days. One counts as if to define the thought conjunctively. And love. The sense above all else—what do you think, what do you know. And placed upon the string a song to make in memoriam Robert Creeley (1926–2005) CRSUM09 poetry.indd 85 5/22/2009 12:37:04 PM ...