Then it was the future, though what’s arrived
isn’t what we had in mind, all chrome and
cybernetics, when we set up exhibits
in the cafeteria for the judges
to review what we’d made of our hypotheses.

The class skeptic (he later refused to sign
anyone’s yearbook, calling it a sentimental
degradation of language) chloroformed mice,
weighing the bodies before and after
to catch the weight of the soul,

Long scree of pill bottles
spilling over the tipped brim
of the wicker basket, fifty or more,
a hundred,

your name on every one and under
your name the brusque rune of instructions —
which ones to take, how many, and often,
on what days,

In the barn demoted to garage,
the ax in a cherry stump can’ t be budged.

Daylight perforates siding despite
the battered armor of license plates —

corroded colors, same state: decay,
their dates the only history

of whoever tilled the soil
and left, as a welcome, the skull

of a possum nailed to the door, and the trail
of lime to the torn sack

in a corner where cobwebs festoon a scythe.
Rusted sharp, it sings

when he grips its splintery handle, swings,
and crowns topple from Queen Anne’ s lace.

Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,

treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:

your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.

Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?