Let’ s not wrestle with water
anymore —
Enters until we flexible
in its acceptance
Persistent in entering
through green or brown windowpanes
jagged from years of sun
Lights out
across the street yr candle
dances still or
flashlight we send
signals
interrupted by slinging branches
Tonight is O. K. —
after all
you walk by the window
tip yr head at the orange sky blue lightning
partially our rainbow
1
When the thought came to him it was so simple he shook his head.
People are always looking for kidneys when their kidneys go bad.
But why wait? Why not look when you’ re healthy?
If two good kidneys do the trick, wouldn’ t three do the job even better?
Three kidneys. Maybe two livers. You know. Two hearts, of course.
Instead of repairing damage, why not think ahead?
I run high in my body
on the road toward sea.
I fall in love. The things
the wind is telling me.
The yellow sky quiet
in her quiet dress.
Old birds sending news
from the reddish hills.
& the one hawk flying
in the distance overhead.
That hawk is what
the wind says. In love
with the heaving
of my peacock chest,
with my lungs, two wings,
such flying things,
but mine for now, just for now
as I open my stride
above the good, dirt road,
fall in love with the mustard
A cigarette kiss in the desert. The wind-proof arc
of flame sparks inside the speeding Buick. Menthol:
a break from the monotony of highway nicotine —
most intimate of drugs. Make this mean sorrow
or thermodynamics, whatever small gesture
there is time for. Light another one, the vainglorious
Dusk to dawn, sleek skunks enjoy
avocados in my yard. I give wide berth.
Before the first jogger leaves her prints
on pavement, tough raccoons appear.
They pretend they don’ t hear my keys click
but they peek to make sure it’ s me.
Foxes play hide-and-seek,
sometimes on our lawn, other times
across the street, but never after seven;
and brazen squirrels eye me
from the center of the street,
dare me to approach.
I’ m eight years old and all the rooms
of my father’ s house are larger than life. Two days after my
first divorce, the only landscape I know is simplified, bone-smooth
and
Someone’ s at the door, somebody please get the door
Somebody please get the door.
is
As soon as possible, I will confront the wren’ s
doings, rinse the white streaks from the porch bricks
drawing lizards from their shade, the immediate
smell of water too much for all of us.
But first is lunch. The remains we’ ll scatter over
the driveway away from the bricks. Wrens come,
crusts from our dishes make drama. Then history.
i. the positing of space, corporeal history
medium of my body
bent to narrow rivers,
touching of the touch
commits
totem to shape:
jasmine buds,
water poppies open as the mouth.
Propolis and juniper oil
resinous viscera
embowered in trees,
as the meat
within the shell
as the shell before the caw
a bleached weed
a fig
dusted to sweet the skin
egg albumen of peacock
butterfly
held to the ivory of oxen hoof
pulling
the space
between sins I am
as I am so
Cherry plums suck a week’ s soak,
overnight they explode into the scenery of before
your touch. The curtains open on the end of our past.
Pink trumpets on the vines bare to the hummingbirds.
Butterflies unclasp from the purse of their couplings, they
light and open on the doubled hands of eucalyptus fronds.
They sip from the pistils for seven generations that bear
them through another tongue as the first year of our
punishing mathematic begins clicking the calendar
forward. They land like seasoned rocks on the
