I am tired of my own long story,
my blouse stained with vignettes.
The gold ring I lost can not be found,
my china teapot stays broken.
Familiar faces are stacked,
piled high in snapshots.

In this half-light of my life
I will cook a soup of claws and spine.
When my eyes fail I will eat more parsnips.
My skin will become bleached wood,
preserved by salt.
I want no candy hearts or sticky adjectives,
no flower bouquets
or fortune cookie futures.

Give me a love song of nouns and verbs,
of hard surprises.
I will be an old woman with good bones.
Stars will face down and die,
the night will wear itself out,
and I will not let go of anything.

Some strings of light.
Mostly absence.
Out the window, trees,
the narrow margin. The edges
carved in new sun.

I sway,
stalled at the warm window.
Out there the sweep of wings.
Out there wind’s tangle.

I sway to the absence,
a disappearance like hushed flight.
Now the wind nods slack with sleep.

In the tree outside my window,
the scurry of wings
like a preface to arrows.

Latticed shadows of limbs
weave a net of the day.
The sway of the tree I depend on
to summon me.

I feel peeled, coffin-ripped.
The worms of night sated now.

My spectacled eyes
tender as incubated babes.

Elms hang infant leaves
like minuscule laundry.

At a bus stop, a bird walks
high in a tree’s new fringe,

pecking, sashaying
up the limb skyward.

It pauses to call “chip-chip”
into the Morse-code morning.

Soon, someone replies,
“chip-chip.” The bird saunters

out on the attenuating branch,
then steps into air.

What soldier, what saint
will I be in this new life?

Lawn chairs like lateral road maps–
the grass scans blue. I won’t go out
today. Bent light. Light like water spots.
Nobody walks here anymore: three apricot
trees and a peach. The leaves fill with
blue, separate into blank space.

Now, a man in blue grasses sits down on the
lateral slats. Answers turn over in the
middle distance. Think of the way

a blue vein of light remembers itself.
The man in blue glasses frowns
in his lawn chair. He listens to me.

I have a baker’s dozen of blue words
to offer: azure, turquoise, opaline,
etcetera. On the other hand, except for

their pastel variants, some blues are
almost untouchable. Notice how all four
of these blue trees balance each other

against the pale bermuda grass. The man
in blue glasses wipes smears of light
from his eyes. Tomorrow, I will close

the window. I will go outside. Tomorrow,
I will translate the man’s blue hands
into prose for you.

hold what you have loved
firmly in mind

what is
bears also the tendency
not to be
bittersweet
the salts reshuffle

why not moisten
the fingertip
and write
the beloved name in air
right now

Rising above the steady snore
of the purifier, a train whistle
from the nearby tracks scoops away
two metallic llamas and a solitary
wooden elephant plodding along the tops
of the bookshelves. In their absence,
camels from a caravan in a painting,
stumble, lose their footing in the sand.
The cats paw at their reflections in the window.
Time is restructured in that instant
of misdirected sound. Count back
one, two, three centuries.
Train whistles, bugles, church bells

thread through clouds.
My ancestors blow glass
in the Black Forest of Germany,
carry Lafayette off the battlefield,
make an error in judgement about
a new boarder from the coal mine.
Glass glows in the Von Eberhardt furnaces.
Some of the goblets flower, some crack.
A Polish soldier reloads his musket,
and in hard times, a distracted divorcee
ignores an infant daughter dying in her cradle,
gives her son away to an orphanage
tucked behind the spire of a Presbyterian Church
in Pennsylvanian woods.

The young men haunt his days and nights
within the whitewashed wards. At last a bliss
though terrible. To those outside he writes,
“…there is no time to lose, & death & anguish
dissipate ceremony here between my lads
and me.” Without the cloak of poetry,
he cures. He walks between the rows of beds,
his energy unchecked. At last he is free

to love. To give a gift, to dress a wound–
he feels the boys’ needs as his own. His advance,
that war, soon ended; the mended gone, he found
the quickening of death, the stiffened defensive stance
of the “good grey poet,” a man imprisoned
by the nation’s grudging embrace, its frozen optimism.

A man entered the space. Hair. Black. Soft. Moved down his
back. All of his back. Moved when he moved. Kelp with the
tide. Moved him or followed him. I. Like a tiny yellow fish
darted into his hair. And out. No solid between us. Space
only clarified my having him and letting go. Interrupted by
concrete and glass.

A man entered the space. Picture him naked on a white sheet.
His skin the color of walnut oil. His fingers. Hidden. I
wanted him. Suddenly. To never forget.

A man entered the space. Not so many men are beautiful. Not
so many. I personally have seen only four. Maybe five. A
beautiful man is painful to look upon. He is in every aspect.
A man. Has a head joined to shoulders. Arms joined to torso.
Hips riding legs that touch the ground. Thousands. No.
Millions of men pass me in the city streets. One only will move me
to tears. One will disgust me. One will make me pray.

Beautiful men make me still. I. Become, Eyes only. eyes
hiding in a crowded room. Hurts like loss.

A man entered my space. Part crane. Part myth. A man with
invisible wings. Who could rise. Perhaps I fear. The capture.
The ascension.

I now remember nothing except all of him. From where he
occupied space and set his form apart from all other
molecular constructs. Every human who walked into the fifth
floor study registered as not him. I cannot tell you more
than I know. His flesh would be cool. Just enough to keep me
from speaking.

Through the bedroom window
You are there in the morning
Filling every space with snow-like silence
Fooling the northerner with your whiteness

Covering the tops of trees and the roof line of tall buildings
You soften every edge in town
Drip off gutter corners into the streets
Leaving a trail the cats avoid

The valley surface thirsty from a long summer’s drought
Is glad for any water…even yours now dirty
From the dust and grime you’ve trickled off
The leaves and the stone walls

The people are troubled because you break
Their speed as they drive to work
Hawks stay put in their trees waiting for you to rise
Seems like all life hesitates to move

Down by the river, crawling
Through traffic to work or walking
The wet streets to school a few people
Stop in silhouette damp and cold

They pause like phantoms
Gazing into your luminous power
Then move along their way
Shining from within

In late April each man and his
oldest son light the levee fires.
The night bridges are floated
from both sides and joined at

the center. Throughout the night,
I hear footraces, cheers, and the
squeak of old nails in old wood. I
smell crayfish, turnip pudding,

cabbage, and I can almost taste
the walnut prawns. No, I speak no
Chinese at all but the laughter of
the young men echoes into my

morning prayer. When the old
man finally speaks even the dogs
are quiet. There is one final
chorus, then their steps, their

soft leaving steps. At dawn the
levee is covered by fog. But I can still
smell their fires. From the lowest
trail, I smile at shells floating on

the water. This morning I tripped
over sections of their bridges
scattered on the levee, scattered
so casually, in the sedge.