print previewback WILLIAM LOGAN
Sincerity
“All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.”
—S. T. Coleridge, Omniana
That word again, haunting Coleridge
like a hellhound, rolling like a dislodged boulder.
I mean, crushing all.
There was perhaps sincerity in the kingfisher
perched on the concrete edge
of the artificial pond, the reedy stalks
gray with frost, and distantly the pluck-pluck
of the local woodpecker. There was our furniture,
the sublime that remained slime,
the fluff-headed mergansers cruising still waters,
ever on the make. I saw everything,
I thought. Not the hours longing
for the blunt knife of her gaze. Not the haze
of philosophy, or millefiori, for that. Ah, ah.
Once the “silent majority” meant the dead. 
Bramble Lane
Sincerity
The Truth Dog