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The mourning dove wearing noon’s aureole coos from the rhododendron, oo-waoh, shadow o- ver what to do. Oh. And the sad rhetoric spreads through suburb and wood. Those who hear dove moan love no querulous warbling more— the going hence about which is there no- thing to do? From no small rip in fate the you you never shall be more will be extracted. Dove knows the rubric and starts in, who, who is next and soon?

A crown of handmade nails, as though there were a house here once, burned, where we’ve gardened for fifteen years; the ceramic top of an ancient fuse; this spring the tiny head of a plastic doll— not much compared to what they find in England, where every now and then a coin of the Roman emperors, Severus or Constantius, works its way up, but something, as though nothing we’ve ever touched wants to stay in the earth, the patient artifacts waiting, having been lost or cast away, as though they couldn’t bear the parting, or because they are the only messengers from lives that were important once, waiting for the power of the frost to move them to the mercy of our hands.

Turn again, turn again, Goose Clothilda, Goosie Jane. Bright wooden waves of people creak From houses built with coloured straws Of heat; Dean Pasppus’ long nose snores Harsh as a hautbois, marshy-weak. The wooden waves of people creak Through the fields all water-sleek. And in among the straws of light Those bumpkin hautbois-sounds take flight. Whence he lies snoring like the moon Clownish-white all afternoon. Beneath the trees’ arsenical Sharp woodwind tunes; heretical— Blown like the wind’s mane (Creaking woodenly again). His wandering thoughts escape like geese Till he, their gooseherd, sets up chase, And clouds of wool join the bright race For scattered old simplicities.

Today I saw the word written on the poplar leaves. It was

b-boy Wordsworth beatbox vocal cord code switching through the wheat fields at daybreak clicking his teeth against the corn’s high yellow thighs prying open like the sunlight’s tear ducts on the morning the moon forgot how to speak Twi the cicadas having screeched all night in Old English like a man who has forgotten his name calling out the leaves of grass as though stalks of letters at right angles have meaning a way of theorizing the rhetoric of beauty a fig tree trembling at the rain’s hungry lick a finch weaving myth into a nested crown of logic the wildflowers’ arms on dial-up internet a virgin using the petals as her service provider he loves me, he loves me not, with every flick of her wrist the wind knowing the typeface her lips are set in pockmark cheeks peppered with salt the politics of resentment seasoning the spittle true poems flee like a slave in Mississippi Googling “home” with no filter or cookies the tuning fork having shorted in the eardrum’s mouth the devil was in the details when he read the star’s hands prongs of a serpent’s embrace, steam dancing on a cloud’s rolled tongue, wet and pregnant with words so soft the dirt could swallow the sound what must we remember, to forget how we were born? when we ask for advice it is rather for permission for we know not what we do when we do it in free will a robot puts a conch shell to its lips and blows a man puts a seashell to his ear and hears the ocean tell a lie long enough and it will surely turn to truth

The wrong words sit beside us Where the flesh is heavy. The right words come most easily To those who sleep. I put my boots in a CVS bag Because the weather demanded it And my jacket over The windshield in the morning To confuse the sun. Of mine own life, I'll tell you One thing the internet Won't tell you—I wear my hair Like a woman sometimes. The project of the snow's To put the sky in lo-fi And the memory of last week's Snow's a gash in the air. The mountains and seas Have a queer look about them. A hoax of golden daffodils Obscures them, you might say. I've been told We should pretend That everything we see is real, That images should try As best they can To come to life. I feel that iron Should take the place of snow In the literature And that silk flowers Should be manufactured like Real ones each spring. I'm reading the letters Of distinguished men to you. A broadside of a bad poem On very good paper. A treatise on how to infuse Brandy with plums. My fat ass Surveys the greensward And when I step In the manner befitting a person Of little station in the world The dandelions seem to Vanish in retrospect As though to die were just To overlook the rituals That accompany The death and life of weeds And to fold oneself Back into one's roots. I am so big I mean my ass is so big I can't fit in this room I'm building. My ass can barely fit Without assistance Through the door of this stanza Which is why I invented The pronoun "you." The streetlamps Seemed to you to want to Break apart the clouds So we left the city, are always In the process Of abandoning a city Somewhere. Some days now You'll find us trolling The hillsides for wildflowers. Other times, sitting at the very center Of our garden, googling "beauty" With the filter off.

You will leave your home: nothing will hold you. You will wear dresses of gold; skins of silver, copper, and bronze. The sky above you will shift in meaning each time you think you understand. You will spend a lifetime chipping away layers of flesh. The shadow of your scales will always remain. You will be marked by sulphur and salt. You will bathe endlessly in clear streams and fail to rid yourself of that scent. Your feet will never be your own. Stone will be your path. Storms will follow in your wake, destroying all those who take you in. You will desert your children kill your lovers and devour their flesh. You will love no one but the wind and ache of your bones. Neither will love you in return. With age, your hair will grow matted and dull, your skin will gape and hang in long folds, your eyes will cease to shine. But nothing will be enough. The sea will never take you back.

The Moon's a little prairie-dog. He shivers through the night. He sits upon his hill and cries For fear that I will bite. The Sun's a broncho.   He's afraid Like every other thing, And trembles morning, noon and night Lest I should spring and sting.

Your dust will be upon the wind Within some certain years, Though you be sealed in lead to-day Amid the country’s tears. When this idyllic churchyard Becomes the heart of town, The place to build garage or inn, They’ll throw your tombstone down. Your name so dim, so long outworn, Your bones so near to earth, Your sturdy kindred dead and gone, How should men know your worth? So read upon the runic moon Man’s epitaph, deep-writ. It says the world is one great grave. For names it cares no whit. It tells the folk to live in peace, And still, in peace, to die. At least, so speaks the moon to me, The tombstone of the sky.

On a backwards-running clock in Lisbon, By the marble statue of Pessoa; On an antique astrolabe in London Tracing out the sky above Samoa, Thousands of miles away—in time, in place, Each night conspires to create a myth That stands for nothing real, yet leaves you with The vague impression of a human face. The fragments fly apart and shift, trembling On the threshold of a kind of fullness: The minor wonder of remembering; The greater wonders of forgetfulness. For one looks back as someone else might yearn For a new life, and set his course upon The polestar, bid his adieus, and move on. The journey takes a solipsistic turn, Forsaking starlight for an inner glow, And reducing all human history, All human culture—highbrow, middle-, low-— To one reflecting surface, one story. What fills the heaven of a single mind? The things that used to fill Kant’s mind with awe —“The starry heavens and the moral law”— Seem distant now, and difficult to find Amid the message of satiety Issuing from the corners of the sky, Filled with monotonous variety: Game shows, an interview with Princess Di, And happy talk, and sitcoms and the news, The shit that floats across your living room Each weekday evening. Waiting in the pews, Out in the desert where the cacti bloom, Something else was forming, something stranger Gathering in the gulf below the stairs— As though the mystery of the manger Were written in the day-to-day affairs Of a world consecrated to Mammon, Yet governed by those sacred absences That make the spirit soar, and presences At one remove, like the sound of Cuban Drumbeats issuing from the Ricardos’ Love nest on the television station Like distant thunder; or Leonardo’s “Wave that flees the site of its creation.” In the desert far beyond the city, One hears the cadences for which one longs, The lyrics of those half-forgotten songs, —Some of them poignant, some of them witty— Brimming with the melody of passage; One feels the wind that blows the soul about, Repeating its inscrutable message; And as night falls, one sees the stars come out. I found myself beneath a canopy Of scenes left out of someone else’s life —The dog that didn’t bark, Rosebud, Cain’s wife— Arrayed above me in a panoply Of glittering debris, gigantic swirls Of stars, and slowly moving caravans Of stars like tiny Christmas lights or pearls Of tapioca, floating in a danse macabre across the heavens as I stood, Watching the pageant in the sky unfold. I felt the chill of something much too old To comprehend—not the Form of the Good, But something inchoate and violent, A Form of Darkness. Suddenly the songs Floating through the revelry fell silent, As in The Masque of the Red Death, as throngs Of the dead twinkled at me from above. The intimate domain of memory Became an endless field of entropy Transfigured, inking in the outlines of Eurydice entombed, Orpheus immured, And, in the center of their universe, That subtler diadem of stars obscured By the brighter constellations, the Hearse. Standing off to one side, as though bereft, There was a figure with averted eyes, Gesturing in a language of surprise That took possession of my heart, yet left The question of her meaning unresolved. I looked at her. It was time to begin. The apparations in the sky dissolved, Leaving me alone, and growing old. In The wide, unstructured heavens overhead The stars were still shining. When I got home, The message light was blinking on the phone. I don’t remember what the message said.