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The Fine Madness


by Gary Hardaway


The intimations come from some
inheritance in the brain
that makes one susceptible
to poems and small addictions.

A phrase, a sentence, a stanza,
sounds among the sums and lists
and starts a scratched cascade
of syllables and other approximations--

of the goddess voice, or something
Jungian, or just some small,
Skinnerian hiccup. Whether
magical, mythical or conditional,

it is insistent, capturing the ear
and eye no one else can see or serve.
Sums and lists can be retraced-
necessities mother them-

but sparked, synaptic tones
burn once, and not again.
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