got my head between my paws
because it’s having a damn
birthday party. How old do you think I am?
I bet you think I’m
seventeen.
It doesn’t matter. Just between
us, you know what I’m doing
now? I’m calling the cows home.
They’re coming, too.
I lower
myself to the ground lazily,
a shower of avuncular kisses
issuing from my hands and lips—
I just wanted to tell you
I remember you even now;
Goodbye, goodbye. Here come the cows.
The End of the Line
We plan in partial sleep
a day of intense activity—
to arrive at a final bargain
with the deaf grocer,
to somehow halt a train;
we plan our love’s rejuvenation
one last time. And then
she dreams another life
altogether. I’ve gone away.
The petals of a red bud
caught in a wind between
Hannibal and Carthage,
the day has disappeared.
Like a little soap bubble
the moon glides around
our bed. We are two negroes
lugubriously sprawled
on a parched boardwalk.
The Move
… you are alone with the Alone,
and it is His move.
Robert Penn Warren
The old buccaneers are leaving
now. They have had
their fill. A blue halo
has circled the imitation
gold, and the real, and they
are bewildered. All
is shimmering. The sea
is shimmering like a marvelous belly
viewed from the outside
during a blizzard in the mountains.
For each other
they are shimmering.
They do not know what splendor
is balanced
atop the foresail now, what
it is that is moving, moving
toward them, down.
They rub their bodies.
The skin is a fine lace
of salt and disease,
and something is moving
just under the skin
and they know
that it is not blood.
Flight
for K.
Like a glum cricket
the refrigerator is singing
and just as I am convinced
that it is the only noise
in the building, a pot falls
in 2B. The neighbors on
both sides of me suddenly
realize that they have not
made love to their wives
since 1947. The racket
multiplies. The man downhall
is teaching his dog to fly.
The fish are disgusted
and beat their heads blue
against a cold aquarium. I too
lose control and consider
the dust huddled in the corner
a threat to my endurance.
Were you here, we would not
tolerate mongrels in the air,
nor the conspiracies of dust.
We would drive all night,
your head tilted on my shoulder.
At dawn, I would nudge you
with my anxious fingers and say,
Already we are in Idaho.
Grace
The one thing that sustained
the faces on the four
corners of the intersection
did not unite them,
did not invite others to join.
Their inner eyes as the light
changed did not change,
but focused madly precise
on the one thing until
it scared them. Then
they all went to the movies.
I was just
