Ontology Stinks Poem by Peter Minter

The world does not know it offers nothing.
I am meant to see a white shirt,
whale bone buttons flashing under lights,
the advice of a lissom woman
sulfur crest in green pine leaves,
my arms on her brown thigh
a cloud in the valley rising for the storm.

How to offer the shadow unmade
by three white candles, the scent
left on my open palm
by the featherless skull of a hawk,
stones above Green Cape
a spectre for trawlers
five metres deep beneath the foam.

I see her beer can balanced on an edge,
mercury on the crease by her nipple ring,
Red flower on the verge of the widow,
long hands crying in the earth.