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Clora, come view my soul, and tell Whether I have contrived it well. Now all its several lodgings lie Composed into one gallery; And the great arras-hangings, made Of various faces, by are laid; That, for all furniture, you’ll find Only your picture in my mind. Here thou are painted in the dress Of an inhuman murderess; Examining upon our hearts Thy fertile shop of cruel arts: Engines more keen than ever yet Adorned a tyrant’s cabinet; Of which the most tormenting are Black eyes, red lips, and curlèd hair. But, on the other side, th’art drawn Like to Aurora in the dawn; When in the East she slumbering lies, And stretches out her milky thighs; While all the morning choir does sing, And manna falls, and roses spring; And, at thy feet, the wooing doves Sit pérfecting their harmless loves. Like an enchantress here thou show’st, Vexing thy restless lover’s ghost; And, by a light obscure, dost rave Over his entrails, in the cave; Divining thence, with horrid care, How long thou shalt continue fair; And (when informed) them throw’st away, To be the greedy vulture’s prey. But, against that, thou sit’st afloat Like Venus in her pearly boat. The halcyons, calming all that’s nigh, Betwixt the air and water fly; Or, if some rolling wave appears, A mass of ambergris it bears. Nor blows more wind than what may well Convoy the perfume to the smell. These pictures and a thousand more Of thee my gallery do store In all the forms thou canst invent Either to please me, or torment: For thou alone to people me, Art grown a numerous colony; And a collection choicer far Than or Whitehall’s or Mantua’s were. But, of these pictures and the rest, That at the entrance likes me best: Where the same posture, and the look Remains, with which I first was took: A tender shepherdess, whose hair Hangs loosely playing in the air, Transplanting flowers from the green hill, To crown her head, and bosom fill.

Reaching for the vinegar over the range hood (still dashing grass wisps on the gas flames from the exhaust vent where we booted that brooding sparrow) I remember the rabbit in the Tiergarten that perched on its spatula feet where the grass had just started to green. The German clouds were unibrow. It's not the stretching, slightly weaving, that recalls it, it's the tang of vinegar, Easter egg dye solvent. And my gallimaufry gets going, guests for dinner, the requisite foofaraw. In the soffits of the staircase a rag and a featherduster. In the eaves the nests made of frass and cellophane. "When it rains on a golf course it's called Irish dew — " Father-in-law's jackstraw. "Dundee, is this an Aussie shiraz? Put it in the croc au vin." Cellophane and frass. Everything in the canon went into Gargantua before he was born from the ear beneath his mama's cornrows: Augustine, Aquinas. Aristotle and Plato. Virgil and Homer. Goliards and troubadours. Thus an ort peeking out from a nostril, skin flakes, a slight acne, undercoat all colors, like a farrow; the chuffer, snuffler, grunter, farter, pecker, whelp, head half the size of the requisitioned teat (Googling "mastitis" and finding "ewe," ew) — the whole shebang reeks of bedstraw. On the radio, transrational statistics; Brigitte Bardot lashing out at the leash law in Zurich; on an uncle's fourth percussive sneeze the baby wakes — interrobang —

I thought we were playing a game in a forest that day. I ran as my mother chased me. But she’d been stung by a bee. Or bitten by a snake. She shouted my name, which even as a child I knew was not “Stop. Please. I’m dying.” I ran deeper into the bright black trees happily as she chased me: How lovely the little bits and pieces. The fingernails, the teeth. Even the bombed cathedrals being built inside of me. How sweet the eye socket. The spine. The curious, distant possibility that God had given courage to human beings that we might suffer a little longer. And by the time I was willing to admit that all along all along I’d known it was no game I was a grown woman, turning back, too late.

Love not being in the loop. Grant the spruces’ wish, the golf compound graying out of use, suvs in the it lot, power outage, a chorus from the quad. Bless the elsewhere where others are not here or you. And rain after midnight . . . Ask yourself, is that rain or bells?

Looking up, “The purple now,” she dips her brush and finishes the day. The flag descends. She draws the fire with a marker on fax paper uncurling from its spool. Inventory of glasses, the handblown ones blue-edged could hold a sunset neat, the new regime is softball-sized and etched with tigers. In town they’re pulling draughts for every swinging door. Don’t get angry, don’t get angry. The soaker’s washed and left to dry. Iron Hessians oversee the fire gone to bed beside the harbor, geese calling each to each triangulate the dark. Passing through or are they wintering over? In chevron resolve. Like waking to the rain and walking anyway. She thinking of what to do with pawpaw  jelly, he of mildew and of marrow, while their youngest bouncing gums the leather dice cup, sister rolls, counts, and makes a point. Get even says the horizon like the sun, democratic and unsparing.

Surely you paused at this roadside oasis In your nomadic youth, and saw the mound Of never-used cement, the curious faces, The soft-drink ads and the uneven ground Rainbowed with oily puddles, where a snail Had scrawled its slimy, phosphorescent trail. Like a frontier store-front in an old western It might have nothing behind it but thin air, Building materials, fruit boxes, scrap iron, Dust-laden shrubs and coils of rusty wire, A cabbage-white fluttering in the sodden Silence of an untended kitchen garden — Nirvana! But the cracked panes reveal a dark Interior echoing with the cries of children. Here in this quiet corner of Co. Cork A family ate, slept, and watched the rain Dance clean and cobalt the exhausted grit So that the mind shrank from the glare of it. Where did they go? South Boston? Cricklewood? Somebody somewhere thinks of this as home, Remembering the old pumps where they stood, Antique now, squirting juice into a cream Lagonda or a dung-caked tractor while A cloud swam on a cloud-reflecting tile. Surely a whitewashed sun-trap at the back Gave way to hens, wild thyme, and the first few Shadowy yards of an overgrown cart track, Tyres in the branches such as Noah knew — Beyond, a swoop of mountain where you heard, Disconsolate in the haze, a single blackbird. Left to itself, the functional will cast A death-bed glow of picturesque abandon. The intact antiquities of the recent past, Dropped from the retail catalogues, return To the materials that gave rise to them And shine with a late sacramental gleam. A god who spent the night here once rewarded Natural courtesy with eternal life — Changing to petrol pumps, that they be spared For ever there, an old man and his wife. The virgin who escaped his dark design Sanctions the townland from her prickly shrine. We might be anywhere but are in one place only, One of the milestones of earth-residence Unique in each particular, the thinly Peopled hinterland serenely tense — Not in the hope of a resplendent future But with a sure sense of its intrinsic nature.

After it lifts the army-green, stuffed dumpster over its head and the trash falls to the receptacle, it hulks backward with a cadenced beep as if to say, get out the fucking way, please.

For Marybelle Her daughter wrote back to say my friend had died (my friend to whom I wrote a letter maybe twice a year). From time to time I'd pictured her amid strange foliage (and in a Mongol yurt, for she was fond of travel). Why not a flock of something darkening the sky, so we would know (ah, so-and-so is gone!)? For a woman from the city, this might perhaps be pigeons (blacking out the sun). Or else a human messenger, as once when she was fabric shopping (bolt of green silk furled across her body) Garbo passed, and nodded. At Macy's years ago (when I was not a creature in her world). Of course she bought the cloth, but never sewed the dress ("a massive stroke, and I take comfort in the fact she felt no pain.") Logic says we should make omens of our Garbos and our birds (but which one bears the message? which one just the mess?) From the kayak, I've seen pigeons nesting underneath the pier (a dim ammoniated stink) where one flew into my face. I read this as a sign (that rancid smash of feathers) but couldn't fathom what it meant, trapped in the lag-time (of an oracle's translation). Foolish mind, wanting to obliterate the lag and why— (let memory wait to catch up to its sorrow).

1 A pepper of  bees opens the pupils. An ensemble of aromatics Chorus aphrodisia, mariner’s root, bright sky and night star, heavenly rainbow. Amethyst, azure, blue flower-de-luce. Flowering ring. • White archangelic the bee nettle, the dead nettle. A hide of nettle cloth, of finely-nerved sedge. Take heed the edges, the pipes, the passages, the petal corridor, the corolla tube. • A blossom is a throat. Rose oil and hip. A ripped rose is a voice organ, time-cut and curt. Royally red and confidence- keeping, redder than Mars, redder than hot days and parched, Venus on the lips. 2 Muscle rose. Flesh rose. A verge toward red Then rustling redshank rose. Vines ascend the arch of aorta. Mercurial, the climbing nightshade, the bundle-branched bittersweet. • White-spotted hellebore under Jupiter and wind. Oak lungs, jovial lungs. Sea rush blows the lungs with sweet rose, carmine and sanguine, flaming red. Candleberry fires the blood. • Red is antispasmodic, cardiovascular. Great garden patience of Mars. May-blossom, hawthorn. Spring gushes red-veined with sorrel, bloodwort below Jupiter, red dock for longevity. 3 Venus stokes the throatwort. Ringing with wasps The good leaf. The rose noble. L’herbe du siège slackens the isthmus of the fauces. Gash-red and choking rose. • Double tongue. Bay laurel. Daphne of the sun. Yarrow charms wasps, snuffs the inveterate headache. Daphne sings the bees from the ears. • The voice reeds are a Queen Anne’s lace of wasps. Mercury abounds with buzz and wild carrot, jump-starts speech with hoar-strange words, a gargle of hog’s fennel and brimstone wort. 4 Under Leo, composure. Touchwood and rue Herb of grace. Anti-magical. Vinegar of the four thieves. Poison against poison. Rue before regret. Touch wood Ruta sets the garden free. • Lightning sulfur the garden prone to primrose and paroxysm. Pellitory- of-the-wall quells old hacking. An old cough. A new moon courtesy of wild clary. Eyebright. Clear eye (en toute bonne foi). • Sweep away the broom, the burdock, the beastly antipathy between ash tree and adder. Snakeweed. Dragon’s blood. Devil’s bit. Serpent’s tongue. Wickedness (a weak moon) licked & licked & licked. 5 What a commotion! Wild rocket, a racket Flesh and blood of wake robin, cuckoo point, the clear caroling rise & fall. Volatile dog’s mercury. Dog’s-grass. Dog rose. Hot fits and cold metallic blue. The indecisive indigo. • So the garden bellyaches. So what the gripes? Rows rife with tormentil, gallant herb of the sun. Five fingers, flesh and blood. Stamina, life’s long thread, root-red, the unhindered heart. • Leaves respire and rain returns blood-veined and blood dock, blood-colored juices. Red poppy a headache. Heartichoke the downhearted. Loosestrife calms the fugitive scarlet. Sweet slumber. The fleshy rootstock. 6 Enlist imagination under the banner of science. Erasmus Darwin, Flora attired by the elements. his Botanic Muse Sea lavender, sea holly, sundrops. Jacob’s ladder reaching ether. Wind rose. Sun rose. Water grass. • The loves of the plants. (The economy of vegetation.) Root, pith, lobes, plume, calyx, coral, sap. Air distributes the seeds of names. Windflower, digitalis. Tipsy and ethereal. Trade winds, vital light. Seeds within seeds. • Start from the soil, and win their airy way. The fifty-seeded heart’s delight, saturnine and doting wild. Heart’s-ease. Herb constancy. Pensée...    An opening. Call-me-to-you. Kiss-her- in-the-buttery. Meet-me-in-the-entry. 7 The yard wants what the yard wants. Rose Bloom of Ruth. Breath of life. Blush. Charisma. Compassion. Imagination. Ebb Tide and Nostalgia. Ground cover and climbers. Floribunda. Abundance. • A hybrid of bruise and steep, petal and dreg. Lungfuls of lamp flower, rose campion, rose of heaven. The moon shoulders roseroot, rosy-colored stonecrop. The neck laced with French rose, common rose, pomander of roses. • At the center of the garden the heart. Red as any rose. Pulsing balloon vine. Love in a puff. Heartseed, heart-of-the-earth. A continuous flow of red. 8 Nosebleed, staunchweed, sanguinary. List Thousand-leaved root of yellow. Thousand weed with leaves like feathers. Small birds flirt herb-of-Venus’ tree. If my love love me, nosebleed and yarrow. • Feverfew-profuse June and July. Agueweed, sweating-plant, boneset with yellow thrum. Venus yields to water. Boneset breaks the sun. • Past mudwalls and molehills, where the cowslips and the lungs moss, hedge bells, morning glory and the hundred-leaved rose, all the livelong organs rose — a catalogue, a desire, a wish. 9 Chaffweed whups the chin-cough. Life everlasting Venus hiccups dry wind and sandy rows. The garden ruminates cudweed, creeping roots June through September. Pearl-flowered. Eternal flower. • Take flower-gentle. Take knitbone and knitback. Ass ear. Blackwort. Slippery root. Saturn’s orbit comfrey-picked and sea-goat-prickly. Take sea wrack, knobbed wrack, bladderwrack. • Paralysis and palsywort the garden supplants fool’s parsley with imperatives! Forget-me-not. Forget-me-not. Forget-me-not. Mouse-ear to the ground. Borage for courage. Self-heal. All-heal. By crook or by hook-heal. 10 La voilà! Horsetail and paddock-pipes. Viola organista A hurdy-gurdyish drone. Pansy-meek with cattail and fretted tension. (Love-in-idleness.) The over-thinking viola. • Liverwort, liverleaf, liverweed. A low sun and Jupiter presumes three-lobed hepatica. Water hectors wind and wind blows sound into lungwort, bladderwort, kidneywort, the kidney-leaved sower weed, the hartwort. • Dame de coeur. The crowning heart. The garden wants it all: leaf, stem, root, the whole shooting match shoot system, timbre, pitch, fully chromatic rows, heart trefoil and arssmart under sun.

Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen, prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers. Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers, he gazes forward to the city in the distance—always the same bountiful smile upon his portly face. Why don’t I share his one-minded happiness? The pear blossom, the crimson-petaled magnolia, filling me instead with a mixture of nostalgia and yearning.  He’s laughing at me, isn’t he? The seasons wheeling despite my photographs and notes, my desire to make them pause. Is that the lesson?  That stasis, this holding on, is not life?  Now I’m smiling, too—the late cherry, its soft pink blossoms already beginning to scatter; the trillium, its three-petaled white flowers exquisitely tinged with purple as they fall.