ground will be hard. The grass will be tan.
But there will come a day much deeper into spring,
a day shady and humid
in the unfurled foliage of June,
when I realize I haven’t thought about that bag in weeks
because I can’t see it at all,
I can’t see its branch.
The massive ramparts for the great gone door of Domme
will have lost a lot of bulk by then,
resembling more and more the sketch
on page twenty-one
in the Green Guide to the Dordogne.
They Are Widening the Road
The pipes have been revealed, enormous,
that lurked all along underground.
The clay-colored dirt is piled. Barriers
are fortified by barrels, hurdles, stakes.
Here’s the backhoe making three-point
turns, the traffic at a halt. The heat.
The sun that bakes the dust. The sun
through glass that magnifies the heat.
Too near to every business here, and house,
a mile of road has moved from plan
to controversy to regret. Several
of the orange cones, disturbed,
have tumbled into rolling hazards.
Here is the church, the hardware store,
the auto supply, the bank, the gallery,
the pharmacy, the school. Here is the other
auto supply. Here is the world
with its six billion people, with its
how many random cancellations
of the single will, hopeful, defeated,
locked once to another—rhythm, scent
and curvature—in the ancient act
of increase, not thought of in these terms,
but felt: a direction that was sure.
Detained, detoured, deferred.
The personal is different than the whole.
We are directed into other lanes.
Does anybody out there feel
that the issue of fairness has been given,
all too often, a disproportionate attention?
It takes but gentle mention and the matter’s
tabled yet again. With us
or without us, an agenda slips along
like mercury through tubes of glass.
The line is longer and the great big sound
from close behind is right inside our car.
There is no moving up in line
and the pavement of the lane ahead is ripped.
Pilot car
Follow me
Buttons
The sons of friends have learned to fold and snap paper
into abruptly-coming noise at my head. Oh, let them
in their red-faced rowdiness have a bit of fun at my expense,
I said to myself, what have I done so worthy of respect?
I’ve worked soil through a sieve, let it cover seeds I couldn’t see.
I’ve taken pleasure in rolling up loaves of once-risen dough.
Yesterday I spent one hour picking free a broken zipper,
then spent another hour stitching in a new one to replace it.
Arvo Pärt came on the radio; it was easy to keep going.
Once I even sized and joined by hand six graduated leaves
of gauzy fill when I might have paid little more
for manufactured shoulder pads. Less and less
does my vocabulary match that of the television selves.
Less and less do I buy what they assume I have,
not to mention what they sell. More and more they seem
to speak and reach out to one another. I remember when
the newsman sat alone and looked me in the eye.
I might as well take one of the overlarge buttons
from my great-aunt’s quilted box that even I have failed
to find a use for and strap it to my wrist for a watch.
My Job as a Child
I spent my childhood filling things in.
I spent my childhood thrown out on the rug,
rubbing crayon on pages
in big thin books
until color spread to the edge of the shape
where a black, pre-drawn line defined it.
I loved the August rhythms
in the action of the hand’s edge against the page,
and the interruption:
the crucial exchange of one crayon
for another in the cardboard box,
one of so many decisions.
I used the point or, more rarely
