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à Geeta The brown girl, golden, sable-eyed, flourishing yellow hibiscus, steps exuberant, august, into August— her lushly brocaded gold silk sari lavishing honey light at her auburn feet, sandalled, cedarly, with scent of sandalwood haloing her, her individualized, warm, light-dark body, her every glance a direction of the air, her look of mischievous—even tart—sweetness.... O has she...? She has come in from morning’s slight autumnal chill, her feet moistened with diamantine dew— how the sea summers in grass (that same grass that rears at the sun while butterflies mob frangipani...). Behold her smile declaring warm, sun-dyed, terracotta lips— that chance come home— and I answer, “You are light uplifting, liberating me from murk, from an inferno of squalor.” O! Let there be rum and molasses, rice and mackerel, O Muse, the Indian Ocean softening and sweetening the Atlantic, this august autumn. All these pleasures we will prove: lotus like slow-motion lightning, ivory gold fountaining from earth, like you, a fresh light, sprung from earth.

6:48 a.m., and leaden little jokes about what heroes we are for getting up at this hour. Quiet. The surf and sandpipers running. T minus ten and counting, the sun mounting over Canaveral a swollen coral, a color bright as camera lights. We’re blind- sided by a flash: shot from the unseen launching pad, and so from nowhere, a flame-tipped arrow—no, an airborne pen on fire, its ink a plume of smoke which, even while zooming upward, stays as oddly solid as the braided tail of a tornado, and lingers there as lightning would if it could steal its own thunder. —Which, when it rumbles in, leaves under or within it a million firecrackers going off, a thrill of distant pops and rips in delayed reaction, hitting the beach in fading waves as the last glint of shuttle receives our hands’ eye-shade salute: the giant point of all the fuss soon smaller than a star. Only now does a steady, low sputter above us, a lawn mower cutting a corner of the sky, grow audible. Look, it’s a biplane!— some pilot’s long-planned, funny tribute to wonder’s always-dated orbit and the itch of afterthought. I swat my ankle, bitten by a sand gnat: what the locals call no-see-’ums.

Town, a town, But location Over which the sun as it comes to it; Which cools, houses and lamp-posts, during the night, with the roads— Inhabited partly by those Who have been born here, Houses built—. From a train one sees him in the morning, his morning; Him in the afternoon, straightening— People everywhere, time and the work pauseless: One moves between reading and re-reading, The shape is a moment. From a crowd a white powdered face, Eyes and mouth making three— Awaited—locally—a date. * Near your eyes— Love at the pelvis Reaches the generic, gratuitous (Your eyes like snail-tracks) Parallel emotions, We slide in separate hard grooves Bowstrings to bent loins, Self moving Moon, mid-air. * Fragonard, Your spiral women By a fountain ‘1732’ Your picture lasts thru us its air Thick with succession of civilizations; And the women. * No interval of manner Your body in the sun. You? A solid, this that the dress insisted, Your face unaccented, your mouth a mouth? Practical knees: It is you who truly Excel the vegetable, The fitting of grasses—more bare than that. Pointedly bent, your elbow on a car-edge Incognito as summer Among mechanics. * ‘O city ladies’ Your coats wrapped, Your hips a possession Your shoes arched Your walk is sharp Your breasts Pertain to lingerie The fields are road-sides, Rooms outlast you. * Bad times: The cars pass By the elevated posts And the movie sign. A man sells post-cards. * It brightens up into the branches And against the same buildings A morning: His job is as regular.

I don’t mind the human race. I’ve got pretty used to them In these past twenty-five years. I don’t mind if they sit next To me on streetcars, or eat In the same restaurants, if It’s not at the same table. However, I don’t approve Of a woman I respect Dancing with one of them. I’ve Tried asking them to my home Without success. I shouldn’t Care to see my own sister Marry one. Even if she Loved him, think of the children. Their art is interesting, But certainly barbarous. I’m sure, if given a chance, They’d kill us all in our beds. And you must admit, they smell.

He that loves a rosy cheek, Or a coral lip admires, Or from star-like eyes doth seek Fuel to maintain his fires; As old Time makes these decay, So his flames must waste away. But a smooth and steadfast mind, Gentle thoughts and calm desires, Hearts with equal love combin'd, Kindle never-dying fires. Where these are not, I despise Lovely cheeks, or lips, or eyes. No tears, Celia, now shall win My resolv'd heart to return; I have search'd thy soul within, And find nought, but pride, and scorn; I have learn'd thy arts, and now Can disdain as much as thou. Some power, in my revenge, convey That love to her I cast away.

Touch and go. Our Cessna bumped the sand, thumped its tundra tires, lifted as if on wires, banked over ice and rocked its wings to land. We pitched our camp hard by the Hubbard’s face, some sixty fathoms tall, a seven-mile-long wall seven leagues from Yakutat, our base.

Before my first communion, I clung to doubt as Satan spider-like stalked the orb of dark surrounding Eden for a wormhole into paradise. God had formed me from gel in my mother’s womb, injected by my dad’s smart shoot. They swapped sighs until I came, smaller than a bite of burger. Quietly, I grew till my lungs were done then the Lord sailed a soul like a lit arrow to inhabit me. Maybe that piercing made me howl at birth, or the masked creatures whose scalpel cut a lightning bolt to free me. I was hoisted by the heels and swatted, fed and hauled around. Time-lapse photos show my fingers grow past crayon outlines, my feet come to fill spike heels. Eventually, I lurched out to kiss the wrong mouths, get stewed, and sulk around. Christ always stood to one side with a glass of water. I swatted the sap away. When my thirst got great enough to ask, a clear stream welled up inside, some jade wave buoyed me forward, and I found myself upright in the instant, with a garden inside my own ribs aflourish. There, the arbor leafs. The vines push out plump grapes. You are loved, someone said. Take that and eat it.

Be willing to dismantle for the purposeof rebuilding on more solid structure.—Horoscope First you must lift the idea (be careful it may be heavy) and haul it out to the dumpster. Next locate the meaning—it may not come easily, though if you have the right tools and they are good tools you should have no difficulty. Now it is the sentences' turn: take each one strip it of grammar (you may need abrasives here) and hang them all on a line. When thoroughly dried, lay each one down on the grass or if you live in the city, the sidewalk will do. The point is, make sure you put them in harm's way, wherever you are. Don't try to protect them. It may be they will go to war, or wander the desert or haunt the streets like beggars or run from the police or suffer loneliness and despair. Remember: they must make their own way. The best you can do is to stay out of theirs and take them back in if they return.

Rent a flatbed with a winch. With the right leverage anything can be hoisted, driven off. Or the man with a Bobcat comes in, then the hauler with his enormous truck. A leveler or a lawyer does the rest; experts always are willing to help. The structure was old, rotten in spots. Hadn't it already begun to implode? Believe you've just sped the process up. Photographs, toys, the things that break your heart—let's trust they would have been removed, perhaps are safe with the children who soon will have children of their own. It's over. It's time for loss to build its tower in the yard where you are merely a spectator now. Admit you'd like to find something discarded or damaged, even gone, and lift it back into the world.

A leaf the green that a child would choose if asked to draw a leaf. * This heavy-petalled rose is humid as the accent of my current correspondent. * Trees unberried by bird. Trees unleafed by beetle. * My correspondent is a tentative man and I am unaccustomed to tentative men. * White rose blossom browning at the edges. Paperback book. * Inside, my mother humming a song I’ve never heard. * Kinds of holiness. * Trees unbarked by winter deer. * My correspondent will not let me love him. * Green things make such mild noise. * I uncross my legs to find, with a bare foot, that sun has warmed the stone. I partake of the sun. * And the stone.