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Thus heav’ n-ward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor’ d.
So God has greatly purpos’ d; who would else
In his dishonour’ d works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong’ d without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter’ d world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! we would see,
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate his laws,
And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,

Aunt Mildred tied up her petticoats with binder’ s
twine, and my great-uncle Ezekiel waxed and waxed
his moustaches into flexibility. It was the whole
family off then into the dangerous continent of air

and while the salesman with the one gold eyetooth told us
the cords at our ankles were guaranteed to stretch
to their utmost and then bring us safely back
to the fried chicken and scalloped potatoes of Sunday dinner

I hid the deed:
— would my life end?

The grackle called it back again.

The grackle then
became

my life. A swan’ s neck
curling to ask
what if

uncurled
to reachinto the reed,

It was the blind girl from the rez who
stole the baker’ s missing bread;
it was the guitar playing fool who crooned
and raced the wild mustangs through our heads.
It was the village idiot who played
his chess without the fool, the bowl
of soup who said too late, too late, too late
to blame the thread, the spoon, the text, the mole.

Beside the waterfall of fallen things
just east of town, it was the bearded man
attaching fallen things to angel’ s wings
while singing legends to the long, long grass.

He startled to see a statue of blind
justice really did loom over the courtroom. But
remained determined to scorn symbolism.
She needed a quarter to call her lover —
the docket was full, she’ d be late for lunch —
and he gave her one. It was not a taunt,
acquiescence, wager, or plea. It was
a quarter. The fact that they had done this —
even this! — together and cordially,

After a morning of work in separate rooms
she said she was going to the municipal pool
and he said he would walk along the river
for a while before they met back for their lunch
of tomatoes and cheese. But in fact she went
to the lobby of the Hotel du Panthéon
to read the Herald Tribune and drink a cup
ofnthe Irish tea she liked and he to

Each morning in the little white cabin
by the river they woke to a raccoon
clawing under the floorboards or banging
in the wood stove. They did not discuss this.
Instead they said it was a perfect day
to pick blueberries on the hill, or that
a hike to the old glassworks sounded good.

Zipping your skirt, you rustle past,
sand hissing through a glass,
with the Bedouin snap and flash
of static-electric
sparks disturbing fabric.
This morning’ s charge could rouse
The Desert Fathers of Sinai
over which I drowse.

Pale gold and crumbling with crust
mottled dark, almost bronze,
pieces of honeycomb lie on a plate.
Flecked with the pale paper
of hive, their hexagonal cells
leak into the deepening pool
of amber. On your lips,
against palate, tooth and tongue,
the viscous sugar squeezes
from its chambers, sears sweetness
into your throat until you chew
pulp and wax from a blue city
of bees. Between your teeth
is the blown flower and the flower's
seed. Passport pages stamped
and turning. Death's officious hum.

Her arms around me — child —
Around my head, hugging with her whole arms,
Whole arms as if I were a loved and native rock,
The apple in her hand — her apple and her father,
and my nose pressed
Hugely to the collar of her winter coat — . There
in the photograph

It is the child who is the branch
We fall from, where would be bramble,
Brush, bramble in the young Winter
With its blowing snow she must have thought
Was ours to give to her.