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Oh, how the wind howls, howls the blossoms from the boughs; Oh how the boughs bend, bend and willow to the ground; Oh, how the ground wells, wells with blossoms blown to hills; Oh, how the hills sound, sound a whisper pink and loud.

The green catalpa tree has turned All white; the cherry blooms once more. In one whole year I haven’t learned A blessed thing they pay you for. The blossoms snow down in my hair; The trees and I will soon be bare. The trees have more than I to spare. The sleek, expensive girls I teach, Younger and pinker every year, Bloom gradually out of reach. The pear tree lets its petals drop Like dandruff on a tabletop. The girls have grown so young by now I have to nudge myself to stare. This year they smile and mind me how My teeth are falling with my hair. In thirty years I may not get Younger, shrewder, or out of debt. The tenth time, just a year ago, I made myself a little list Of all the things I’d ought to know, Then told my parents, analyst, And everyone who’s trusted me I’d be substantial, presently. I haven’t read one book about A book or memorized one plot. Or found a mind I did not doubt. I learned one date. And then forgot. And one by one the solid scholars Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars. And smile above their starchy collars. I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions; One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s. Lacking a source-book or promotions, I showed one child the colors of A luna moth and how to love. I taught myself to name my name, To bark back, loosen love and crying; To ease my woman so she came, To ease an old man who was dying. I have not learned how often I Can win, can love, but choose to die. I have not learned there is a lie Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger; That my equivocating eye Loves only by my body’s hunger; That I have forces, true to feel, Or that the lovely world is real. While scholars speak authority And wear their ulcers on their sleeves, My eyes in spectacles shall see These trees procure and spend their leaves. There is a value underneath The gold and silver in my teeth. Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives, We shall afford our costly seasons; There is a gentleness survives That will outspeak and has its reasons. There is a loveliness exists, Preserves us, not for specialists.

We have walked in Love's land a little way, We have learnt his lesson a little while, And shall we not part at the end of day, With a sigh, a smile? A little while in the shine of the sun, We were twined together, joined lips, forgot How the shadows fall when the day is done, And when Love is not. We have made no vows--there will none be broke, Our love was free as the wind on the hill, There was no word said we need wish unspoke, We have wrought no ill. So shall we not part at the end of day, Who have loved and lingered a little while, Join lips for the last time, go our way, With a sigh, a smile?

Side by side through the streets at midnight, Roaming together, Through the tumultuous night of London, In the miraculous April weather. Roaming together under the gaslight, Day’s work over, How the Spring calls to us, here in the city, Calls to the heart from the heart of a lover! Cool to the wind blows, fresh in our faces, Cleansing, entrancing, After the heat and the fumes and the footlights, Where you dance and I watch your dancing. Good it is to be here together, Good to be roaming, Even in London, even at midnight, Lover-like in a lover’s gloaming. You the dancer and I the dreamer, Children together, Wandering lost in the night of London, In the miraculous April weather.

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk. The rain makes running pools in the gutter. The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night— And I love the rain.

Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway. The world is in a delay. All the political consultants drinking whiskey keep their heads down, lifting them only to look at the beautiful scarred waitress who wears typewriter keys as a necklace. They jingle when she brings them drinks. Outside the giant plate glass windows the planes are completely covered in snow, it piles up on the wings. I feel like a mountain of cell phone chargers. Each of the various faiths of our various fathers keeps us only partly protected. I don’t want to talk on the phone to an angel. At night before I go to sleep I am already dreaming. Of coffee, of ancient generals, of the faces of statues each of which has the eternal expression of one of my feelings. I examine my feelings without feeling anything. I ride my blue bike on the edge of the desert. I am president of this glass of water.

1. It is cold enough for rain to coagulate and fall in heavy drops. Tonight a skin of ice will grow over the bones of the smallest bush, making it droop like the wrist of someone carrying a heavy suitcase. This moving on, from season to season, is exhausting and violent, the break from the Berlin Wall of winter especially. Like a frostbitten hand coming to life, I color first with warmth, then with pain. Thawing, letting the great powers go their own way, in rivers and in flesh, frightens me, as this day warns me of an icy night. 2. Each year I am astonished at the havoc wrought on other lives: fathers made tiny by cancer; a mother swollen around a bad heart "brought on by aggravation." To suffer is to do something new yet always the same— a change of life from the sexual dread. Some women wish they were men, some men wish they were dead; still, there is coin in suffering . . . It makes us rich as Croesus in his golden tears, and we are rarely hated for it. This coin I store in a purse made of my mother's milk and flesh, which God says I must not mix. I use it instead to seek pleasure. 3. Walking around with this thing in me all day, this loving cup full of jelly, waiting for you to come home—seven o'clock, eight o'clock, eight-thirty . . . What could be more important than love? I can't imagine; you can. Not a good day, not about to get better. 4. The bird comes complete with heart, liver, and neck-bone wrapped chastely in white paper. Still half-frozen, the legs are hard to separate. Inside, wax paper sticks to the ribs. I reach like a vet delivering pigs, or a boy finger-fucking a virgin. 5. Air the same sweet temperature inside the house as outside the house. Stepping up from the cellar with an armful of sheets, I listen for the dirge of flies under the chittering birds, both painfully loud. There is a stridency that's stubborn in a life grown by inches: the fat little fingers of buds bursting; ugly ducklings; the slow war of day against night. As I pin the swelling sheets with clothespins damp and too narrow at the mouth, I wonder how flies know to come out to feed the birds, and feast themselves on the new stillborn, this stubborn great chain of being.

The fish are drifting calmly in their tank between the green reeds, lit by a white glow that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank glass that holds them in displays their slow progress from end to end, familiar rocks set into the gravel, murmuring rows of filters, a universe the flying fox and glass cats, Congo tetras, bristle-nose pleocostemus all take for granted. Yet the platys, gold and red, persist in leaping occasionally, as if they can't quite let alone a possibility—of wings, maybe, once they reach the air? They die on the rug. We find them there, eyes open in surprise.

When ice outside makes daggers of the grass, I come to where the tides of life still flow. The water here still moves behind the glass. In here, the seasons never seem to pass— the sullen shark and rays still come and go. Outside the ice makes daggers of the grass and coats the roads. The meditative bass won't puzzle how the blustery blizzards blow. The water here still moves. Behind the glass, rose-tinted corals house a teeming mass of busy neon creatures who don't know "outside." The ice makes daggers of the grass and oily puddles into mirrors. Gas freezes in its lines; my car won't go, but water here still moves behind the glass. No piles of valentines, no heart held fast— just sea stars under lights kept soft and low. Outside, the ice makes daggers of the grass; in here, the water moves behind the glass.

He wanders through the crooked streets that mimic river beds Before and breathes the anxious air in traffic filled with tension left from wooded crossroads in attack He shops the windows, happy, where the stalking once was good and his kitchen floor is built on bones of venison once gently roasted. "It's a good place for a party!" he concurs to friends now dressed in jeans. The ground was already beaten smooth and festive by the joy of ancient dances. He feels the warmth, and doesn't know his soul is filled with the spirit of coyotes past.