circling in air :
saw them pecking
seals’ eyes from
torn skin : a boy
downstrand rolling
in dunes : I could see
the stomach’s red
wall : the small hairs
on its flippers : blubber
wrenched by shark
bite from the belly’s
swell : later seen
from a dune : black
water : fish spit
pooling : mouth open
enough to see teeth
trailing in sand : his lips
limp : there in
the storm’s wake
I wanted something
to say : the ocean
scraped his insides clean
April, Andromeda
I am in this world, not self, not seed, not stamen-dusted
pistil flicking in the wind—the eye sees past its limitations.
Crushed petals in the dirt, I’m courting a horse with an apple,
watching its white tail swish along the fence. Somewhere,
the galaxy spins. I smile at the cloudless sky.
—
Continuum of frequencies, Ptolemy’s
Almagest, the star charts called it Little Cloud—
chained constellations in The Book
of Fixed Stars. Nova for new, cut fish
for never. A heart held back for the knife.
—
The opening of large
tracts by the icecutters
cutters commonly causes
a pond to break
up earlier; for the water
agitated by the wind
even in cold weather
wears away
the surrounding ice.
—
This morning I walked past
rows of jeweled honeysuckle
twining through the square
links in an aluminum fence.
They glistened in the sun,
as they always do. You
could say their vines shuddered.
—
Photographed by Isaac
Roberts, 1887, again
in 1899, the galaxy, the ruler
of man, the pearling
spiral takes its name from
the area of sky in which it appears.
Sussex, England, retrograde motion.
The daughter chained to a rock.
—
We forget rapidly what should be forgotten. The universal
sense of fables and anecdotes is marked by our tendency to forget
name and date and geography. “How in the right are children
to forget name and date and place.”
—
Pained loveliness—the sonnet
sweet fetter’d. Morning, still, couched
in narrative—carrots taken
from my palm. Horse’s muzzle,
its silken touch, teeth against the skin.
The eye sees the mind sees
crushed petals in the pestle.
All parts are binding.
—
Constellations—huge
man wearing a crown,
upside down with respect
to the eclipse. The smaller
figure next to him sitting
on a chair. A whale
somewhere beneath it.
—
By ear industrious—attention
met—misers of sound
and syllable. See kale, see
rows of collard stalks—think
Cassiopeia. Think arrogant
and vain. Greek models, sea
monster Cetus, the errant study of.
—
I shall ere long paint to you—as one can without
canvas—the true form of the whale—
my parts are all binding—
as he actually appears to the eye—
I wonder, now, how Ovid
