Slippage

The Original Poem: 'Slip' by Mark Goodwin

'Slip'

slip sound from lips
slip letters
slip ink across paper

spill written’s
slippery space’s of senses

very sly slivers
of silvery river spill
lisps

lets say tree
lets write tree
a tree sways

as wind slips through
slips around a tree’s leaves
a tree brushes sky

a glimpsed red brush gives
us the slip
slip from one sign to another

slip down an icy path
slip from word to
word to word to

slip towards order
or red or dis or dear
(read backwards

as wacky bards)
lets look up tree
open a slippery dictionary

a woody perennial plant
slippery typically
having a single slippery

stem or trunk
(stem or trunk or pole
or post or bole ... timber!)

growing to a considerable
slippery height and bearing
slippery lateral branches


at some slippery distance
from a slippery ground
look up!

for a moment spy
a still red squirrel up high
as still

as a kneeling reader teetering
on the lip of sleep
still for a split

second then
suddenly squiggling
speedily as scribble

along all a dictionary’s
slippery branches
for kernels in nutshells

will be repeatedly mislaid
in slippery ground so(w)
to grow repeated

single slippery stems with
slippery laterals by a same
changed slippery river

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© Mark Goodwin and Gavin Stewart 2005