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Whatever city or country road you two are on there are nettles, and the dark invisible elements cling to your skin though you do not cry and you do not scratch your arms at forty-five degree angles as the landing point of a swan in the Ohio, the Detroit River; at the Paradise Theatre you named the cellist with the fanatical fingers of the plumber, the exorcist, and though the gimmicky at wrist and kneecaps could lift the seance table, your voice was real in the gait and laughter of Uncle Henry, who could dance on either leg, wooden or real, to the sound of the troop train, megaphone, catching the fine pitch of a singer on the athletic fields of Virginia. At the Radisson Hotel, we once took a fine angel of the law to the convention center, and put her down as an egret in the subzero platform of a friend— this is Minneapolis, the movies are all of strangers, holding themselves in the delicacy of treading water, while they wait for the trumpet of the 20th Century Limited over the bluff or cranny. You two men like to confront. the craters of history and spillage, our natural infections of you innoculating blankets and fur, ethos of cadaver and sunflower. I hold the dogwood blossom, eat the pear, and watch the nettle swim up in the pools of the completed song of Leadbelly and Little Crow crooning the buffalo and horse to the changes and the bridge of a twelve-string guitar, the melody of “Irene”; this is really goodbye— I can see the precious stones of embolism and consumption on the platinum wires of the mouth: in the flowing rivers, in the public baths of Ohio and Michigan.

1. I am thirty this November. You are still small, in your fourth year. We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer, flapping in the winter rain, falling flat and washed. And I remember mostly the three autumns you did not live here. They said I’d never get you back again. I tell you what you’ll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go. I, who chose two times to kill myself, had said your nickname the mewling months when you first came; until a fever rattled in your throat and I moved like a pantomime above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The blame, I heard them say, was mine. They tattled like green witches in my head, letting doom leak like a broken faucet; as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet, an old debt I must assume. Death was simpler than I’d thought. The day life made you well and whole I let the witches take away my guilty soul. I pretended I was dead until the white men pumped the poison out, putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole of talking boxes and the electric bed. I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel. Today the yellow leaves go queer. You ask me where they go. I say today believed in itself, or else it fell. Today, my small child, Joyce, love your self’s self where it lives. There is no special God to refer to; or if there is, why did I let you grow in another place. You did not know my voice when I came back to call. All the superlatives of tomorrow’s white tree and mistletoe will not help you know the holidays you had to miss. The time I did not love myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove. There was new snow after this. 2. They sent me letters with news of you and I made moccasins that I would never use. When I grew well enough to tolerate myself, I lived with my mother. Too late, too late, to live with your mother, the witches said. But I didn’t leave. I had my portrait done instead. Part way back from Bedlam I came to my mother’s house in Gloucester, Massachusetts. And this is how I came to catch at her; and this is how I lost her. I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said. And she never could. She had my portrait done instead. I lived like an angry guest, like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child. I remember my mother did her best. She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled. Your smile is like your mother’s, the artist said. I didn’t seem to care. I had my portrait done instead. There was a church where I grew up with its white cupboards where they locked us up, row by row, like puritans or shipmates singing together. My father passed the plate. Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said. I wasn’t exactly forgiven. They had my portrait done instead. 3. All that summer sprinklers arched over the seaside grass. We talked of drought while the salt-parched field grew sweet again. To help time pass I tried to mow the lawn and in the morning I had my portrait done, holding my smile in place, till it grew formal. Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit and a postcard of Motif number one, as if it were normal to be a mother and be gone. They hung my portrait in the chill north light, matching me to keep me well. Only my mother grew ill. She turned from me, as if death were catching, as if death transferred, as if my dying had eaten inside of her. That August you were two, but I timed my days with doubt. On the first of September she looked at me and said I gave her cancer. They carved her sweet hills out and still I couldn’t answer. 4. That winter she came part way back from her sterile suite of doctors, the seasick cruise of the X-ray, the cells’ arithmetic gone wild. Surgery incomplete, the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard them say. During the sea blizzards she had here own portrait painted. A cave of mirror placed on the south wall; matching smile, matching contour. And you resembled me; unacquainted with my face, you wore it. But you were mine after all. I wintered in Boston, childless bride, nothing sweet to spare with witches at my side. I missed your babyhood, tried a second suicide, tried the sealed hotel a second year. On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and this was good. 5. I checked out for the last time on the first of May; graduate of the mental cases, with my analyst’s okay, my complete book of rhymes, my typewriter and my suitcases. All that summer I learned life back into my own seven rooms, visited the swan boats, the market, answered the phone, served cocktails as a wife should, made love among my petticoats and August tan. And you came each weekend. But I lie. You seldom came. I just pretended you, small piglet, butterfly girl with jelly bean cheeks, disobedient three, my splendid stranger. And I had to learn why I would rather die than love, how your innocence would hurt and how I gather guilt like a young intern his symptoms, his certain evidence. That October day we went to Gloucester the red hills reminded me of the dry red fur fox coat I played in as a child; stock-still like a bear or a tent, like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox. We drove past the hatchery, the hut that sells bait, past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall’s Hill, to the house that waits still, on the top of the sea, and two portraits hung on the opposite walls. 6. In north light, my smile is held in place, the shadow marks my bone. What could I have been dreaming as I sat there, all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone of the smile, the young face, the foxes’ snare. In south light, her smile is held in place, her cheeks wilting like a dry orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown love, my first image. She eyes me from that face, that stony head of death I had outgrown. The artist caught us at the turning; we smiled in our canvas home before we chose our foreknown separate ways. The dry red fur fox coat was made for burning. I rot on the wall, my own Dorian Gray. And this was the cave of the mirror, that double woman who stares at herself, as if she were petrified in time — two ladies sitting in umber chairs. You kissed your grandmother and she cried. 7. I could not get you back except for weekends. You came each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack your things. We touch from habit. The first visit you asked my name. Now you stay for good. I will forget how we bumped away from each other like marionettes on strings. It wasn’t the same as love, letting weekends contain us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name, wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying. You call me mother and I remember my mother again, somewhere in greater Boston, dying. I remember we named you Joyce so we could call you Joy. You came like an awkward guest that first time, all wrapped and moist and strange at my heavy breast. I needed you. I didn’t want a boy, only a girl, a small milky mouse of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house of herself. We named you Joy. I, who was never quite sure about being a girl, needed another life, another image to remind me. And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure nor soothe it. I made you to find me.

Blizzard to lilac. Dandelion to leaf. Endless variation of seasons I note in passing, smells I cannot smell: rotting gardens, feces, musk of cat. These two run in front of me, golden shoulder to patchwork, heads lifted or lowered into scent, tongues lolling. Ears damp with their own spittle and each other's tell me, tethered a pace behind, their journey's epic: tipping forward to the familiar or stranger's distant yap; angling to my breathing, whispered praise, my slightest suggestion. Ignored. The shepherd throws herself into any whirring wheel, to herd the neighbor's tractor mower or the UPS truck's packets home; pulling her back, the golden's oblivious ballast, instinct heading always for the gutter's deepest puddle, her own way within the forked leash's one-foot range. As we pass, the clans set up their barking, as if we were news, gathering center of a congenial warning din—mine answer with disturbances of pace, an extra pull or lollop, grins thrown slant-eyed over shoulders until one hears a call she can't ignore, surrenders to baying's ferocious joy moving through muscle and bone. Moving storm, storm's eye: happy universes whirl in their skins as I do in mine. Unknowable, their fate. Mediums between foreign principalities, they're tied to me, to each other, by my will, by love; to that other realm by song, and tooth, and blood.

Speeding, without destination, after dark torrents have poured & been returned at home, the skies above mirror my mood, windshield wipers knifing through sheets, back roads slick with pooling, when a shard of cloudlessness opens. Pulling over, cutting the ignition, I unstitch myself from the humid seat, still fuming, to greet a full spectrum of color arcing past the treetops in lockstep with its fainter inverse. Archer's bow, hem of the sun god's coat, bridge between worlds, reconciliation & pardon. They don't last.

Do you blame me that I loved him? If when standing all alone I cried for bread a careless world Pressed to my lips a stone. Do you blame me that I loved him, That my heart beat glad and free, When he told me in the sweetest tones He loved but only me? Can you blame me that I did not see Beneath his burning kiss The serpent’s wiles, nor even hear The deadly adder hiss? Can you blame me that my heart grew cold That the tempted, tempter turned; When he was feted and caressed And I was coldly spurned? Would you blame him, when you draw from me Your dainty robes aside, If he with gilded baits should claim Your fairest as his bride? Would you blame the world if it should press On him a civic crown; And see me struggling in the depth Then harshly press me down? Crime has no sex and yet to-day I wear the brand of shame; Whilst he amid the gay and proud Still bears an honored name. Can you blame me if I’ve learned to think Your hate of vice a sham, When you so coldly crushed me down And then excused the man? Would you blame me if to-morrow The coroner should say, A wretched girl, outcast, forlorn, Has thrown her life away? Yes, blame me for my downward course, But oh! remember well, Within your homes you press the hand That led me down to hell. I’m glad God’s ways are not our ways, He does not see as man, Within His love I know there’s room For those whom others ban. I think before His great white throne, His throne of spotless light, That whited sepulchres shall wear The hue of endless night. That I who fell, and he who sinned, Shall reap as we have sown; That each the burden of his loss Must bear and bear alone. No golden weights can turn the scale Of justice in His sight; And what is wrong in woman’s life In man’s cannot be right.

It is the dark of the moon. Late at night, the end of summer, The autumn constellations Glow in the arid heaven. The air smells of cattle, hay, And dust. In the old orchard The pears are ripe. The trees Have sprouted from old rootstocks And the fruit is inedible. As I pass them I hear something Rustling and grunting and turn My light into the branches. Two raccoons with acrid pear Juice and saliva drooling From their mouths stare back at me, Their eyes deep sponges of light. They know me and do not run Away. Coming up the road Through the black oak shadows, I See ahead of me, glinting Everywhere from the dusty Gravel, tiny points of cold Blue light, like the sparkle of Iron snow. I suspect what it is, And kneel to see. Under each Pebble and oak leaf is a Spider, her eyes shining at Me with my reflected light Across immeasurable distance.

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy, And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy; For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb, Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web. But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds, Which turn to rain of late repent by changed course of winds. The top of hope supposed the root upreared shall be, And fruitless all their grafted guile, as shortly ye shall see. The dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds, Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds. The daughter of debate that discord aye doth sow Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath taught to know. No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port; Our realm brooks not seditious sects, let them elsewhere resort. My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge employ To poll their tops that seek such change or gape for future joy.

Could you come back to me, Douglas, Douglas, In the old likeness that I knew, I would be so faithful, so loving, Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true. Never a scornful word should grieve ye, I’d smile on ye sweet as the angels do,— Sweet as your smile on me shone ever, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true. Oh, to call back the days that are not! My eyes were blinded, your words were few; Do you know the truth now up in heaven, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true? I never was worthy of you, Douglas; Not half worthy the like of you: Now all men beside seem to me like shadows— I love you, Douglas, tender and true. Stretch out your hand to me, Douglas, Douglas, Drop forgiveness from heaven like dew; As I lay my heart on your dead heart, Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Southbound, downwardly mobile in A knocking ten-year-old LeSabre, Totaled once and salvaged, rust Gnawing at the rocker panels like Fire at the curtains in a melodrama, I imagine those for whom such news Must matter: sauve, smooth-featured types, Untroubled by the odd details Of racing forms or powerball, Who, while I drove truck or counted stock, Were wisely planning their estates, Diversifying portfolios, or buying A summer place with acreage. Yet how their evening now is shot! How flat the chardonnay, how bland The tips of tenderloin must taste! Of course, it’s not the Dow alone— The dollar’s through the roof, T-bills Have plunged, and, even now, the wife Is pussyfooting at the club. How birdsong-sweet and full of joy Seems my life by comparison: The Gulf’s two hours off, where rigs Pound at the solar plexus of The earth, and where, on moonlit nights, Perfumed mulattoes weave like snails By the shore, leaving shining trails.