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All evening I hunted the bird that wanted a cage of glass, here where cemetery slides into creek, fronting what was once the largest indoor leather mill in the world. There the skins gathered for cleansing, coloring, scraping, shipping off. It closed three years after a lone sparrow set up camp behind the only desk in the only full-serve service station left in town where, from four to seven nightly one summer, I blackened the pages of books with my thumbs. Whatever it sought there— thumping its frightened body against glass, into cabinets or out to the bays scrubbed raw with gasoline where the broken waited to be raised up, hosed off, fastened together in hope of coughing to life again— whatever it sought was not a dollar slipped through a window cracked because patronage was right for the aging ladies of August to provide from Chryslers cool in the sun. There was nothing to be found in books or boxes of parts. And the tools hanging from pegs were as useless as my hands, which could not patch together those straggling conveyances any more than I could with a tattered broom batter the bird to freedom as I swung at fluttering terror as I sought with useless devices some fortune reposed in corners of grease and dust.

Spiders in the cold, bees in inarticulate bunches hang from a day's work. Waiting for light they wait to see what they will be. A tree lets down green undersides and is maple. A window glints— a thing of saffron kindles with singlehood. In the broad yard each thing dandles its blue, its name, its consequence.

Her body like a pomegranate torn Wide open, somehow bears what must be born, The irony where a stranger small enough To bed down in the ox-tongue-polished trough Erupts into the world and breaks the spell Of the ancient, numbered hours with his yell. Now her breasts ache and weep and soak her shirt Whenever she hears his hunger or his hurt; She can’t change water into wine; instead She fashions sweet milk out of her own blood.

Besides Sundays there were Wednesday evenings and the occasional Tuesday. They called Tuesdays “visitation” and we would meet in the parking lot and load into a van. There were little cards with peoples’ names and addresses on them and we’d drive around until contact was made. I always managed to hide a few cards and claimed carsickness but it was too humid to stay in the van. Oftentimes I’d recognize someone from school and felt like apologizing but couldn’t. On Wednesdays, it was a bit easier because we arrived early so my mom could volunteer. I skated the parking curbs on the side of the building and could hear the choir practice. Other times I’d wait on the stairs at the cosmetology school next door. There was this kid who dropped out of eighth grade, and I was his lookout while he smoked. He preferred to be called Fluid and got kicked out of youth group more than once. The youth minister was large and pale and wore tight shirts that made sweat stains around his belly. One day we went on a retreat that turned out to be a rented trailer in the country. In the afternoon we watched films inside and at night played games in the dark. I wound up sleeping under a table listening to Sanitarium from Master of Puppets on repeat. The following morning my headphones were taken away so I could be open to the message. Other retreats included all night bowling and Friday night lock-up. Arrival was at ten and they would keep us awake with caffeine, sweets, and more games. I frequently got nervous being separated into groups and remember once winning a race in the foyer wearing high-heels. Later I escaped to the pews of the sanctuary. It was pitch black and I found myself standing in a drained baptismal with white robes hanging over the windows. It was strange to see where all those people went after the altar calls. Those were on Sunday mornings and the services were very long and formal. It was important to sit behind the older ladies so you could sleep behind their hair. After the closing song I’d wait in the car seemingly for hours, listening to mix tapes, mostly Suicidal Tendencies or Maiden. Then we’d drive to a Chinese restaurant or go to this pizza place that had a buffet. I’d watch the others play video games but most of the time I’d just go outside. The clouds were always cumulus and some afternoons you could hear the wind and think about what it’d be like to be somewhere else. It really didn’t matter though, maybe I could get dropped off at a friend’s, watch Kung-Fu Theater, or skate the mini-ramp in the backyard. He had twin sisters and we could do whatever we wanted.

Listen first for anyone. Fill your pockets. Measure the ditch with a wad of gum. Listen. Stay still. Break open the gate with your fist. a backseat to torch. Ditch it. You will need someone, still. but later. from a pay phone. for the rope. Empty your pockets. Check for wild fur and the pant. who wad seats. or possums who hiss under wild shrub. Sharp shooters check the wind. So measure your mouth. the curve of howl. drool and its drop against the wooden tiles. Possum under salt and pine. Screech it. Score the rope with your teeth. Collect the drool in tin. Check for rust. Pull out the nails. Wait for the wood to sag of blood. to good and stalled. Mount the mouth. slip down. Slide under sludge, until the caves open and break. and salt your wounds. and play the black cricket. and nail on the stars. Run low to ground. until your hairs unseat. and your cheek full of shotgun howls. and sags. and, and touches its own blood to light.

I’ll take a bath when it snows, when I can look out the window up high and see the sky all pale and blank like a fish’s eye. And I know the boats won’t go out tonight, the fishermen drinking whiskey, locked in a bar-dream, the music rocking them deeper. It doesn’t snow enough here, though some would say otherwise, fearing accidents. But the paper boy, skidding uphill on his bike in light snow, knows better, making S-tracks when his wheels slide sideways. We really needed this snow, the old men will say, putting to bed the surface roots of trees, putting to bed the too-travelled streets. When everything is covered the earth has a light of its own; the snow falls down from the moon as everyone knows, and brings that light back to us. I needed this light. All day I kept by the window, watching the sky, a prisoner in my clothes, the wind felt dry and mean. Starlings stalked the yard with evil eyes —I hated them, and hated, too, my neighbor’s house where sparks from the chimney fell back in a stinking cloud—black ashes bringing no blessing. When the roads are covered, when the water is black and snow falls into the waves, the birds’ hunger swirls the air, dark lovely shapes. All hungers are equal now. I'll give them bread and seeds. I have no money; the whiskey is gone, and I must bathe in water. Fishermen, please do not go out in your flimsy boats tonight to chase after the cod and mackerel, to hook the giant eels. Go safe, go free. Let your feet leave trails through streets and yards, wandering home, your crooked voyages to bed.

I Cook was a captain of the Admiralty When sea-captains had the evil eye, Or should have, what with beating krakens off And casting nativities of ships; Cook was a captain of the powder-days When captains, you might have said, if you had been Fixed by their glittering stare, half-down the side, Or gaping at them up companionways, Were more like warlocks than a humble man— And men were humble then who gazed at them, Poor horn-eyed sailors, bullied by devils’ fists Of wind or water, or the want of both, Childlike and trusting, filled with eager trust— Cook was a captain of the sailing days When sea-captains were kings like this, Not cold executives of company-rules Cracking their boilers for a dividend Or bidding their engineers go wink At bells and telegraphs, so plates would hold Another pound. Those captains drove their ships By their own blood, no laws of schoolbook steam, Till yards were sprung, and masts went overboard— Daemons in periwigs, doling magic out, Who read fair alphabets in stars Where humbler men found but a mess of sparks, Who steered their crews by mysteries And strange, half-dreadful sortilege with books, Used medicines that only gods could know The sense of, but sailors drank In simple faith. That was the captain Cook was when he came to the Coral Sea And chose a passage into the dark. How many mariners had made that choice Paused on the brink of mystery! ‘Choose now!’ The winds roared, blowing home, blowing home, Over the Coral Sea. ‘Choose now!’ the trades Cried once to Tasman, throwing him for choice Their teeth or shoulders, and the Dutchman chose The wind’s way, turning north. ‘Choose, Bougainville!’ The wind cried once, and Bougainville had heard The voice of God, calling him prudently Out of the dead lee shore, and chose the north, The wind’s way. So, too, Cook made choice, Over the brink, into the devil’s mouth, With four months’ food, and sailors wild with dreams Of English beer, the smoking barns of home. So Cook made choice, so Cook sailed westabout, So men write poems in Australia. II Flowers turned to stone! Not all the botany Of Joseph Banks, hung pensive in a porthole, Could find the Latin for this loveliness, Could put the Barrier Reef in a glass box Tagged by the horrid Gorgon squint Of horticulture. Stone turned to flowers It seemed—you’d snap a crystal twig, One petal even of the water-garden, And have it dying like a cherry-bough. They’d sailed all day outside a coral hedge, And half the night. Cook sailed at night, Let there be reefs a fathom from the keel And empty charts. The sailors didn’t ask, Nor Joseph Banks. Who cared? It was the spell Of Cook that lulled them, bade them turn below, Kick off their sea-boots, puff themselves to sleep, Though there were more shoals outside Than teeth in a shark’s head. Cook snored loudest himself. One day, a morning of light airs and calms, They slid towards a reef that would have knifed Their boards to mash, and murdered every man. So close it sucked them, one wave shook their keel, The next blew past the coral. Three officers, In gilt and buttons, languidly on deck Pointed their sextants at the sun. One yawned, One held a pencil, one put eye to lens: Three very peaceful English mariners Taking their sights for longitude. I’ve never heard Of sailors aching for the longitude Of shipwrecks before or since. It was the spell Of Cook did this, the phylacteries of Cook. Men who ride broomsticks with a mesmerist Mock the typhoon. So, too, it was with Cook. III Two chronometers the captain had, One by Arnold that ran like mad, One by Kendal in a walnut case, Poor devoted creature with a hangdog face. Arnold always hurried with a crazed click-click Dancing over Greenwich like a lunatic, Kendal panted faithfully his watch-dog beat, Climbing out of Yesterday with sticky little feet. Arnold choked with appetite to wolf up time, Madly round the numerals his hands would climb, His cogs rushed over and his wheels ran miles, Dragging Captain Cook to the Sandwich Isles. But Kendal dawdled in the tombstoned past, With a sentimental prejudice to going fast, And he thought very often of a haberdasher’s door And a yellow-haired boy who would knock no more. All through the night-time, clock talked to clock, In the captain’s cabin, tock-tock-tock, One ticked fast and one ticked slow, And Time went over them a hundred years ago. IV Sometimes the god would fold his wings And, stone of Caesars turned to flesh, Talk of the most important things That serious-minded midshipmen could wish, Of plantains, and the lack of rum Or spearing sea-cows—things like this That hungry schoolboys, five days dumb, In jolly-boats are wonted to discuss. What midshipman would pause to mourn The sun that beat about his ears, Or curse the tide, if he could horn His fists by tugging on those lumbering oars? Let rum-tanned mariners prefer To hug the weather-side of yards, ‘Cats to catch mice’ before they purr, Those were the captain’s enigmatic words. Here, in this jolly-boat they graced, Were food and freedom, wind and storm, While, fowling-piece across his waist, Cook mapped the coast, with one eye cocked for game. V After the candles had gone out, and those Who listened had gone out, and a last wave Of chimney-haloes caked their smoky rings Like fish-scales on the ceiling, a Yellow Sea Of swimming circles, the old man, Old Captain-in-the-Corner, drank his rum With friendly gestures to four chairs. They stood Empty, still warm from haunches, with rubbed nails And leather glazed, like aged serving-men Feeding a king’s delight, the sticky, drugged Sweet agony of habitual anecdotes. But these, his chairs, could bear an old man’s tongue, Sleep when he slept, be flattering when he woke, And wink to hear the same eternal name From lips new-dipped in rum. ‘Then Captain Cook, I heard him, told them they could go If so they chose, but he would get them back, Dead or alive, he’d have them,’ The old man screeched, half-thinking to hear ‘Cook! Cook again! Cook! It’s other cooks he’ll need, Cooks who can bake a dinner out of pence, That’s what he lives on, talks on, half-a-crown A day, and sits there full of Cook. Who’d do your cooking now, I’d like to ask, If someone didn’t grind her bones away? But that’s the truth, six children and half-a-crown A day, and a man gone daft with Cook.’ That was his wife, Elizabeth, a noble wife but brisk, Who lived in a present full of kitchen-fumes And had no past. He had not seen her For seven years, being blind, and that of course Was why he’d had to strike a deal with chairs, Not knowing when those who chafed them had gone to sleep Or stolen away. Darkness and empty chairs, This was the port that Alexander Home Had come to with his useless cutlass-wounds And tales of Cook, and half-a-crown a day— This was the creek he’d run his timbers to, Where grateful countrymen repaid his wounds At half-a-crown a day. Too good, too good, This eloquent offering of birdcages To gulls, and Greenwich Hospital to Cook, Britannia’s mission to the sea-fowl. It was not blindness picked his flesh away, Nor want of sight made penny-blank the eyes Of Captain Home, but that he lived like this In one place, and gazed elsewhere. His body moved In Scotland, but his eyes were dazzle-full Of skies and water farther round the world— Air soaked with blue, so thick it dripped like snow On spice-tree boughs, and water diamond-green, Beaches wind-glittering with crumbs of gilt, And birds more scarlet than a duchy’s seal That had come whistling long ago, and far Away. His body had gone back, Here it sat drinking rum in Berwickshire, But not his eyes—they were left floating there Half-round the earth, blinking at beaches milked By suck-mouth tides, foaming with ropes of bubbles And huge half-moons of surf. Thus it had been When Cook was carried on a sailor’s back, Vengeance in a cocked hat, to claim his price, A prince in barter for a longboat. And then the trumpery springs of fate—a stone, A musket-shot, a round of gunpowder, And puzzled animals, killing they knew not what Or why, but killing . . . the surge of goatish flanks Armoured in feathers, like cruel birds: Wild, childish faces, killing; a moment seen, Marines with crimson coats and puffs of smoke Toppling face-down; and a knife of English iron, Forged aboard ship, that had been changed for pigs, Given back to Cook between the shoulder-blades. There he had dropped, and the old floundering sea, The old, fumbling, witless lover-enemy, Had taken his breath, last office of salt water. Cook died. The body of Alexander Home Flowed round the world and back again, with eyes Marooned already, and came to English coasts, The vague ancestral darknesses of home, Seeing them faintly through a glass of gold, Dim fog-shapes, ghosted like the ribs of trees Against his blazing waters and blue air. But soon they faded, and there was nothing left, Only the sugar-cane and the wild granaries Of sand, and.palm-trees and the flying blood Of cardinal-birds; and putting out one hand Tremulously in the direction of the beach, He felt a chair in Scotland. And sat down.

My brother was on his way to a dental appointment when the second plane hit four stories below the office where he worked. He’s never said anything about the guy who took football bets, how he liked to watch his secretary walk, the friends he ate lunch with, all the funerals. Maybe, shamed by his luck, he keeps quiet, afraid someone might guess how good he feels, breathing.

We don’t get any too much light; It’s pretty noisy, too, at that; The folks next door stay up all night; There’s but one closet in the flat; The rent we pay is far from low; Our flat is small and in the rear; But we have looked around, and so We think we’ll stay another year. Our dining-room is pretty dark; Our kitchen’s hot and very small; The “view” we get of Central Park We really do not get at all. The ceiling cracks and crumbles down Upon me while I’m working here— But, after combing all the town, We think we’ll stay another year. We are not “handy” to the sub; Our hall-boy service is a joke; Our janitor’s a foreign dub Who never does a thing but smoke; Our landlord says he will not cut A cent from rent already dear; And so we sought for better—but We think we’ll stay another year.

I From the false summit, coxcomb-cum-arête, cool thermals underscore our frailties, past edges where our wingless feet are set and the long look down dilutes the evergreens. As sandstone ends, the world of ghosts begins— they sometimes rise up still in dreams, my love. With one hand firm, I step onto the skin of the abyss, embracing what’s above and severing spent ties to the scree below. The filtered light turns lichen eerie green, ushering in a world we hardly know, at least not one we’re sure we’ve ever seen just so, each climber brand new in his skin, no longer mired in waiting to begin. ii