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is an imaginary flower that never fades. The amaranth is blue with black petals, it’s yellow with red petals, it’s enormous and grows into the shape of a girl’s house, the seeds nestle high in the closet where she hid a boy. The boy and his bike flee the girl’s parents from the tip of the leaves, green summer light behind the veins. The amaranth is an imaginary flower in the shape of a girl’s house dispensing gin and tonics from its thorns, a succulent. This makes the boy’s bike steer off-course all summer, following the girl in her marvelous car, the drunken bike. He was a small part of summer, he was summer’s tongue.

I know Not these my hands And yet I think there was A woman like me once had hands Like these.

The sudden pink shape surfacing in black-water lagoons shocked explorers. All dolphins share man’s thumb and fingerbones, but these also wear his flesh. When the river overflows and floods the varzea, these dolphins travel miles to splash in the shallows amongst buttress-roots of giant rainforest trees. The waters abate, trapping fish, dolphins never. A lamp burning dolphin oil blinds. At night the pink-flesh contours melt and blur. The flipper extends the hidden hand to lift its woman’s torso to the land. An Eve, born each night from the black Amazon, roams the dark banks for victims to draw to the water and death. Taboo to the Indians, this pink daughter of the river’s magic always looks, to explorers, like she’s smiling.

God started small                     At the first showdown between good and evil       God didn’t come at anyone like a cowboy       God didn’t open with solar flares or asteroids       or mass extinction            or planetary heat death God didn’t outgun anyone               God outmanned them God made man        in the face of the beast And in the face of the beast      God made     —from inside the great and gaping maw         while languishing in the hot damp                           In the face of that great terror          God summoned the smallest— adrenaline        serotonin        hemoglobin        oxytocin        motes of possibility      God started by making— light into land masses      sand into vessels      preservation as civilization   and sometimes   God won

+ This is a poured-truth dressed in memory and cut down; this is a matter ruff; a gray middle the world is in flight and many things circle. What world do you want me in? I ask. But I am confronted with touch, the work of hand and eye, and a kept-remark roaming ... When in Rome, I think. + A dressed-memory: never did more frill mean curtained-silence. Hello? We’re here, they say. I remember the moment first-harvested: no possible brimming is ever frank. At that age, who knew filth could be forward. I thought I could cut it down. + Look, the leaping is possible, I think. I watch the way evening attaches to us. See its starting point? It banded, uncontrolled and gleaming. Our jewel. Not all worlds see the darkness. Remember: the world is good, that leaping center is a tuned heart. I want that melody. + What world do you want me in, now? I ask I feel broad-throated, and slippy. I say,tell me the times the chronicle mentions me. 56, she says. Let me be clear: I knew. I said,I knew. I wanted to have my own grown romance.Plant me another. Do it now.

Three men met at a tavern table.  One was a weaver, another a carpenter and the third a ploughman. Said the weaver, “I sold a fine linen shroud today for two pieces of gold.  Let us have all the wine we want.” “And I,” said the carpenter, “I sold my best coffin.  We will have a great roast with the wine.” “I only dug a grave,” said the ploughman, “but my patron paid me double.  Let us have honey cakes too.” And all that evening the tavern was busy, for they called often for wine and meat and cakes.  And they were merry. And the host rubbed his hands and smiled at his wife; for his guests were spending freely. When they left the moon was high, and they walked along the road singing and shouting together. The host and his wife stood in the tavern door and looked after them. “Ah!” said the wife, “these gentlemen!  So freehanded and so gay! If only they could bring us such luck every day!  Then our son need not be a tavern-keeper and work so hard.  We could educate him, and he could become a priest.”

So it has come to this – insomnia at 3:15 A.M., the clock tolling its engine like a frog following a sundial yet having an electric seizure at the quarter hour. The business of words keeps me awake. I am drinking cocoa, the warm brown mama. I would like a simple life yet all night I am laying poems away in a long box. It is my immortality box, my lay-away plan, my coffin. All night dark wings flopping in my heart. Each an ambition bird. The bird wants to be dropped from a high place like Tallahatchie Bridge. He wants to light a kitchen match and immolate himself. He wants to fly into the hand of Michelangelo and come out painted on a ceiling. He wants to pierce the hornet’s nest and come out with a long godhead. He wants to take bread and wine and bring forth a man happily floating in the Caribbean. He wants to be pressed out like a key so he can unlock the Magi. He wants to take leave among strangers passing out bits of his heart like hors d’oeuvres. He wants to die changing his clothes and bolt for the sun like a diamond. He wants, I want. Dear God, wouldn’t it be good enough just to drink cocoa? I must get a new bird and a new immortality box. There is folly enough inside this one.

Eaglecrest, Juneau, February 24, 1989 Amelia, space-age girl at top of Sourdough makes her run with Eagle Grandpa Dick, Raven girl, balancing on space, gliding on air in Tlingit colors: black pants, turquoise jacket, yellow shoulder patches, black hair like feathers clinging to her head, face the color of red cedar. Once in a while I could even see space between her legs and skis. Diving downhill she continues side to side, slalom style, following Grandpa’s red boots. Then the two figures swoop around the corner, swishing downhill, shooshing home.

On my desk there is a stone with the word “Amen” on it, a triangular fragment of stone from a Jewish graveyard destroyed many generations ago. The other fragments, hundreds upon hundreds, were scattered helter-skelter, and a great yearning, a longing without end, fills them all: first name in search of family name, date of death seeks dead man’s birthplace, son’s name wishes to locate name of father, date of birth seeks reunion with soul that wishes to rest in peace. And until they have found one another, they will not find a perfect rest. Only this stone lies calmly on my desk and says “Amen.” But now the fragments are gathered up in lovingkindness by a sad good man. He cleanses them of every blemish, photographs them one by one, arranges them on the floor in the great hall, makes each gravestone whole again, one again: fragment to fragment, like the resurrection of the dead, a mosaic, a jigsaw puzzle. Child’s play.

Model prisoner or not, I won't. Silver lash, hound's tooth, meager sinful town's crook. I am nervous again. I could kill if you let me. But tonight, I'll be still under this palm. Zeroed out, the tea my toilet muck. Licorice and almond twisted beneath the sink, I'm lovely again. Come on with my dying. Today the globe's underside isn't pink, but rather, I look ahead toward what has happened.