I read that in this famous person’ s poems “she searches
for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self.”
Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn’ t know

whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen,
I came across Tolstoy’ s “What is Art?” where he said
an artist is different from other people because instead

of eating an apple he paints it. Even then I thought why
can’ t he paint it and then eat it, the way at eight, the war
just over, I stood shoeless in line in the snowy playground

The shadows have their seasons, too.
The feathery web the budding maples
cast down upon the sullen lawn

bears but a faint relation to
high summer's umbrageous weight
and tunnellike continuum—

black leached from green, deep pools
wherein a globe of gnats revolves
as airy as an astrolabe.

The thinning shade of autumn is
an inherited Oriental,
red worn to pink, nap worn to thread.

Shadows on snow look blue. The skier,
exultant at the summit, sees his poles
elongate toward the valley: thus

People getting divorced
riding around with their clothes in the car
and wondering what happened
to everyone and everything
including their other
pair of shoes
And if you spy one
then who knows what happened

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.