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My husband and I were arguing about a bench we wanted to buy and put in part of our backyard, a part which is actually a meadow of sorts, a half acre with tall grasses and weeds and the occasional wild flower because we do not mow it but leave it scrubby and unkempt.  This bench would hardly ever be used and in summer when the grasses were high would remain partially hidden from view.  We both knew we wanted the bench to be made of teak so that it would last a long time in the harsh weather and so that we would never have to paint it.  Teak weathers to a soft silver that might, in November or March, disappear into the gray hills that are the backdrop of our lives.  My husband wanted a four foot bench and I wanted a five foot bench.  This is what we argued about.  My husband insisted that a four foot bench was all we needed, since no more than two people (presumably ourselves) would ever sit on it at the same time.  I felt his reasoning was not only beside the point but missed it entirely; I said what mattered most to me was the idea of the bench, the look of it there, to be gazed at with only the vaguest notion it could hold more people than would ever actually sit down.  The life of the bench in my imagination was more important than any practical function the bench might serve.  After all, I argued, we wanted a bench so that we could look at it, so that we could imagine sitting on it, so that, unexpectedly, a bird might sit on it, or fallen leaves, or inches of snow, and the longer the bench, the greater the expanse of that plank, the more it matched its true function, which was imaginary.  My husband mentioned money and I said that I was happier to have no bench at all, which would cost nothing, than to have a four foot bench, which would be expensive.  I said that having no bench at all was closer to the five foot bench than the four foot bench because having no bench served the imagination in similar ways, and so not having a bench became an option in our argument, became a third bench. We grew very tired of discussing the three benches and for a day we rested from our argument.  During this day I had many things to do and many of them involved my driving past other houses, none of which had benches, that is they each had the third bench, and as I drove past the other houses I could see a bench here and a bench there; sometimes I saw the bench very close to the house, against a wall or on a porch, and sometimes I saw the bench under a tree or in the open grass, cut or uncut, and once I saw the bench at the end of the driveway, blocking the road.  Always it was a five foot bench that I saw, a long sleek bench or a broken down bench, a bench with a slatted back or a bench with a solid, carved back, and always the bench was empty. But I knew that for my husband the third bench was only four feet long and he saw always two people sitting on it, two happy or tired people, two people who were happy to be alive or two people tired from having worked hard enough to buy the bench they were sitting on.  Or they were happy and tired, happy to have reached the end of some argument, tired from having had it.  For these people, the bench was an emblem of their days, which were fruitful because their suffering had come to an end. On my bench, which was always empty, nothing had come to an end because nothing had begun, no one had sat down, though the bench was always there waiting for exactly that to happen.  And the bench was always long enough so that someone, if he desired to, could lie all the way down.  That day passed.  Another day followed it and my husband and I began, once more, to discuss the bench.  The sound of our voices revealed a renewed interest and vigor.  I thought I sensed in him a coming around to my view of the bench and I know he sensed in me a coming around to his view of the bench, because at one point I said that a four foot bench reminded me of rough notes towards a real bench while a five foot bench was like a fragment of an even longer bench and I admitted it was at times hard to tell the difference.  He said he didn’t know anything about the difference between rough notes and fragments but he agreed that between the two benches there was, possibly, just perhaps—he could imagine it—very little difference.  It was, after all, only a foot we were talking about.  And I think it was then, in both of our minds, that a fourth bench came into being, a bench that was only a foot long, a miniature bench, a bench we could build ourselves, though of course we did not.  This seemed to be, essentially, the bench we were talking about.  Much later, when the birds came back, or the leaves drifted downwards, or the snow fell, slowly and lightly at first, then heavier and faster, it was this bench that we both saw when we looked out the window at the bench we eventually placed in the meadow which continued to grow as if there were no bench at all.

It's all like a bad riddle, our widow friend said at the time.If a tree falls in the woods and kills your husband, what can you build from it? That she was speaking quite literally we did not know until the day months later the bench arrived, filling that foyer space in the house the neighbors pitched in to finish. She'd done it, she said, for the sake of the boys, and was never more sure of her purpose than when they were off, playing in the woods their father loved, somewhere out of earshot and she would be struggling in with groceries. For her, it was mostly a place to rest such a weight, where other arms might have reached to lift what they could.  Or like the time we knocked at her door, and finding it just ajar, cautiously entered the sunstruck hallway, and saw her sitting there staring into space, before she heard our steps and caught herself, turning smiling toward us, a book left lying open on the bench beside her.

Around the bend of a phrase you return, it’s dawn in a book, it’s a garden, one can see everything, the dew, a moth on a leaf and it’s you who rises suddenly amid the pages and the book grows more lovely because it’s you and you’ve not grown old, you walk slowly to the door.

In a fish cleaning station near the equator, off the coast of Africa, summer stretches over the barracudas, their long mirrored-chrome bodies heaped like eel fillets, slung jaws gaping, red canine teeth exposed as if they still crave meat and muscle. Even dead, they are a melancholy fish, never satisfied, always wanting to bite off more than they can chew, their curious white eyes in a lidless showdown with an existence beyond the visible. Maybe they are the spawn of the serpent who prowled and tempted Eve, cast into the saltwater. They are terrifying and defiant, their pointed heads hammering towards the light, waiting for the first sign of weakness. The fishermen catch them hovering just beneath the surface. What is it like to die with your eyes wide open in the bright sun?

God banish from your house The fly, the roach, the mouse That riots in the walls Until the plaster falls; Admonish from your door The hypocrite and liar; No shy, soft, tigrish fear Permit upon your stair, Nor agents of your doubt. God drive them whistling out. Let nothing touched with evil, Let nothing that can shrivel Heart's tenderest frond, intrude Upon your still, deep blood. Against the drip of night God keep all windows tight, Protect your mirrors from Surprise, delirium, Admit no trailing wind Into your shuttered mind To plume the lake of sleep With dreams. If you must weep God give you tears, but leave You secrecy to grieve, And islands for your pride, And love to nest in your side.

Ah! What avails the classic bent And what the cultured word, Against the undoctored incident That actually occurred?

In a morning coat, hands locked behind your back, you walk gravely along the lines in your head. These others stand with you, squinting the city into place, yet cannot see what you see, what you would see —a vision of these paths, laid out like a star, or like a body, the seed vibrating within itself, breaking into the open, dancing up to stop at the end of the universe. I say your vision goes as far as this, the egg of the world, where everything remains, and moves, holding what is most against it against itself, moving, as though it knew its end, against death. In that order, the smallest life, the small event take shape. Yes, even here at this point, Amma's plan consumes you, the prefigured man, Nommo, the son of God. I call you into this time, back to that spot and read these prefigurations into your mind, and know it could not be strange to you to stand in the dark and emptiness of a city not your vision alone. Now, I have searched the texts and forms of cities that burned, that decayed, or gave their children away, have been picking at my skin, watching my hand move, feeling the weight and shuttle of my body, listening with an ear as large as God's to catch some familiar tone in my voice. Now, I am here in your city, trying to find that spot where the vibration starts. There must be some mistake. Over the earth, in an open space, you and I step to the time of another ceremony. These people, changed, but still ours, shake another myth from that egg. Some will tell you that beginnings are only possible here, that only the clamor of these drums could bring our God to earth. A city, like a life, must be made in purity. So they call you, knowing you are intimate with stars, to create this city, this body. So they call you, knowing you must purge the ground. “Sir, suffer me to recall to your mind that time, in which the arms and tyranny of the British crown were exerted, with every powerful effort in order to reduce you to a state of servitude: look back, I entreat you, on the variety of dangers to which you were exposed; reflect on that time, in which every human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope and fortitude wore the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential preservation; you cannot but acknowledge, that the present freedom and tranquility which you enjoy you have mercifully received, and that it is the peculiar blessing of Heaven.”

Old now, your eyes nearly blank from plotting the light's movement over the years, you clean your Almanac and place it next to the heart of this letter. I have you in mind, giving a final brush and twist to the difficult pages, staring down the shape of the numbers as though you would find a flaw in their forms. Solid, these calculations verify your body on God's earth. At night, the stars submit themselves to the remembered way you turn them; the moon gloats under your attention. I, who know so little of stars, whose only acquaintance with the moon is to read a myth, or to listen to the surge of songs the women know, sit in your marvelous reading of all movement, of all relations. So you look into what we see yet cannot see, and shape and take a language to give form to one or the other, believing no form will escape, no movement appear, nor stop, without explanation, believing no reason is only reason, nor without reason. I read all of this into your task, all of this into the uneasy reproof of your letter. Surely, there must be a flaw. These perfect calculations fall apart. There are silences that no perfect number can retrieve, omissions no perfect line could catch. How could a man but challenge God's impartial distributions? How could a man sit among the free and ordered movements of stars, and waters, beasts and birds, each movement seen or accounted for, and not know God jealous, and not know that he himself must be? So you go over the pages again, looking for the one thing that will not reveal itself, judging what you have received, what you have shaped, believing it cannot be strange to the man you address. But you are strange to him —your skin, your tongue, the movement of your body, even your mysterious ways with stars. You argue here with the man and God, and know that no man can be right, and know that no God will argue right. Your letter turns on what the man knows, on what God, you think, would have us know. All stars will forever move under your gaze, truthfully, leading you from line to line, from number to number, from truth to truth, while the man will read your soul's desire, searcher, searching yourself, losing the relations.

Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law, And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend. Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women, Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone With Nig for partner, bed-fellow, comrade in drink. In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory. Then she, who survives me, snared my soul With a snare which bled me to death, Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent, Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office. Under my jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig — Our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world!

Benny said To Ruby Lee, “M-A-R-R-Y M-E!” Ruby said, To Benny, “Ben, wouldn't That be F-U-N?” Benny said, “My Ruby Lee, We will W-E-D Only if you let me K- I-S-S you Every day!”