Nothing has changed. They have a welcome sign,
a hill with cows and a white house on top,
a mall and grocery store where people shop,
a diner where some people go to dine.
It is the same no matter where you go,
and downtown you will find no big surprises.
Each fall the dew point falls until it rises.
White snow, green buds, green lawn, red leaves, white snow.

This is all right. This is their hope. And yet,
though what you see is never what you get,
it does feel somehow changed from what it was.
Is it the people? Houses? Fields? The weather?

On the crowded hill bordering the mill,
across the shallow stream, nearer than they seem,
they wait and will be waiting.

Rain. The small smilax is the same to the fly
as the big bush of lilacs exploding nearby.
The rain may be abating.

On the quiet hill beside the droning mill,
across the dirty stream, nearer than they seem,
they wait and will be waiting.

The glass-eyed cicada drones in the linden draped like a tent
above three polished stones. Aphids swarm at the scent
of the yellow petals.

This is the place it happened. It was here.
You might not know it was unless you knew.
All day the cars blow past and disappear.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
Look at the sparkling dust, the oily smear.
Look at the highway marker, still askew.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
You might not know it was unless you knew.

Roadlight licks the night ahead, licks
the white line on night"s new hide, licks
the undulating blacktop flat, sticks its end-
less forking tongue out onward, flicks
itself at culvert, tree, passing truck, a sign
insisting heartbeats equal conscious life
(it may be) of someone"s (maybe my)
forever unborn child. I let the knife
of wind inside and sing A Whiter Shade of Pale,
no earthly reason why, and think of what
won"t be and who, and whether it be
speed, wind, song, or my mind"s roar
that drowns for once time"s slangy whine,

At sixteen he dismisses his mother with contempt.
She hears with dread the repulsive wave"s approach
and her fifty-year-old body smothers under water.

An old man loses half his weight, as if by stealth,
but finds in his shed his great-grandfather"s knobbly cane,
and hobbles toward youth beside the pond"s swart water.

She listens to the dun-colored whippoorwill"s
three-beat before dawn, and again when dusk
enters the cornfield parched and wanting water.

He imagines but cannot bring himself to believe

Am I lovely? Of course!
Breathlessly I taste
the subtle compliment
of a handmade caress.
Chop me into tiny bits,
caress and tame my soul,
that godly swallow
you love to no end.

Let us tunnel
Through the rubble,

Through the thrum.
Let us rut through the sum

Of who we were,
Or are,

Or will be in the years to come:
A couple

Of someones
Who used to be in love.

Used to be in love.
Ho. Hum.

These days: Seem to be in hate.
Gypsum, marble, pyrite, slate.

See here. A pit of snakes.
Look there. The rock of your rages.

And I"m in a cable-cage, slinking down your shaft.
You fondle that hefty What if ...? as if

To hurl it. All the other holes

This is the house of the very rich.
You can tell because it"s taken all
The colors and left only the spaces
Between colors where the absence
Of rage and hunger survives. If you could
Get close you could touch the embers
Of red, the tiny beaks of yellow,
That jab back, the sacred blue that mimics
The color of heaven. Behind the house
The children digging in the flower beds
Have been out there since dawn waiting
To be called in for hot chocolate or tea
Or the remnants of meals. No one can see
Them, even though children are meant

Right hand graced with writing,
my left arm my secondhand new
suit bestrode, from the auto I
say, " Antinous, perched like a
parakeet cracking sunflower seeds
in a hot ice cave or cage,
you"re an apogee. Acid pennies
will fill your mouth, your head
bowl at a soldiers" revel. Fly
the safety you despise and seek,
a butcher with a butcher"s knife
peers. The lice are fast. Ta ta. "

Meat-eater, salt-licker, piped spring
dribble-sucker, an exiled Bolshevik"s

villa at Viareggio. The beach sheep
shit crumby money, munificent marks,

lire, dollars, Dolorous Daintyfoot,
Proudass, Chinadoll, a three-way clut-

ter, the piazza pizzeria. Mrs. Smith-
Jones, rich, gonged aground a pissoir.

At three the imprisoned poisoner"s tea
tells her rice-cake fortune, it is it.

Who to who? You yew alley ewes knew
goatsuckers in Swedish horse-hide hid

the boathouse key, locked the oarlock,