1

A tree, enamel needles,
owl takeoffs shake,
flapping a sound and smell
of underwing, like flags,
the clothy weight of flags.
A cone of silence stuck
with diamonds, the watch
she hunts, the frayed band
broke. It was a black night.
Dawn walked on it, the sun
set its heel. She won"t
find: a boundary of marsh,
the island in the wood.

2

Stoop, dove, horrid maid,
spread your chiffon on our
wood rot breeding the

It"s now all about money
about which poetry rarely reaches
transcendence. But love must still fester
even under that. Everyone I know
frets if poetry can still matter,
but what about love? It"s all become
too much for them, and they"re all
on the soma. It makes sense
with these pills when the someone
they thought they loved for years
by never thinking about it says,
" I don"t love you anymore,
but let"s stay friends in that mellow
woebegone way poetry now
sings without singing. " Of course,

On rain washed paper dried, ink
still blurs. But all words
are stains. The paper"s rippled
lunar, mountain and crater,

and seas on the moon, misnomer
of plains that looked like
water once, no-end-to-it shadows,
fractal to fractal. The telescope"s eye

fooled the eye. From there, does
earth rise and set? Or a thrush,
would it sing its trouble backward? —
the most private tremor first, then

the public part, famously
melodic but fierce, really it"s
fierce: stay the fuck away. I know
that lie, Sea of Tranquility .

She visits still too much, dressed in aromas
of fir needles, mango, mold: I still get lost
knowing she"s close, me not getting younger
or more conscious. Sometimes I fantasticate
I"m broad awake: her witchy presence waits
for me to jump into her arms, but then she"s just
an incoherent ache in sleep"s freaked scenes.
I feel her frosty nitrogenous hands and wrists
vaporing nooses around my head and feet
and genitals, conjuring my drab hair
into a party bowl of oiled, desirable locks.
She makes me nervous, but what would I do

Now I can see: even the trees
are tired: they are bones bent forward

in a skin of wind, leaning in
osteoporosis, reaching

for a little more than any
oxygen can give: when living

is in season, they can live;
but living is no reason

to continue: everything begins:
and everything is desperate

to extend: and everything is
insufficient in the end:

and everything is ending:
Now I can see: even the trees

I think of the man who sat
behind my grandmother"s sister
in church and told her
the percentage of Indian
in her blood, calling it out
over the white pews.
I wonder what made
him want to count it
like coins or a grade.
I wish I could hear him
now when I think of her
saying that all
the Wampanoag blood
in her body would
fit in one finger,
discounting the percentage
it seemed, but why was she
such a historian, tracing
the genealogy of the last
Wampanoag up to her own
children, typing it all on see-through

— retracing
trail until

the sun makes
up its mind

to leave
a wilderness

behind — you"ll
never find

the dog
who seems

(in this most
vivid of vivid

dreams) alive
and fresh,

a wish
made flesh,

who left
the leash

and now is
lost — lost

good in the
heart"s deep

wood.

He"s supposed to call his doctor, but for now he"s the May King with his own maypole.
He"s hallelujah. He"s glory hole. The world has more women than he can shake a stick
at. The world is his brickbat, no conscience to prick at, all of us Germans he can ich
liebe dich at. He"s Dick and Jane. He"s Citizen Kane. He"s Bob Dole.
He"s Peter the Great. He"s a tsar. He"s a clown car with an extra car.
Funiculi, Funicula . He"s an organ donor. He works pro boner. He"s folderol.
He"s fiddlesticks. He"s the light left on at Motel 6. He"s free-for-alls.

There was a melon fresh from the garden
So ripe the knife slurped
As it cut it into six slices.
The children were going back to school.
Their mother, passing out paper plates,
Would not live to see the leaves fall.

I remember a hornet, too, that flew in
Through the open window
Mad to taste the sweet fruit
While we ducked and screamed,
Covered our heads and faces,
And sat laughing after it was gone.

Perishable, it said on the plastic container,
and below, in different ink,
the date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed.

I found myself looking:
now at the back of each hand,
now inside the knees,
now turning over each foot to look at the sole.

Then at the leaves of the young tomato plants,
then at the arguing jays.

Under the wooden table and lifted stones, looking.
Coffee cups, olives, cheeses,
hunger, sorrow, fears —
these too would certainly vanish, without knowing when.

How suddenly then