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Isn’t it shocking how he speaks for her? His thin voice wavering across the restaurant — she’ll have the cod artichoke bake. A giggle of  bubbles comes from behind them: a fish tank curtained with seagrass where a seahorse is tying itself to one of those slim, tweedy forms like a hand shaping itself  inside another’s the way my hand tucks into his like a difference pretending it’s not.

I’m wondering where you are now Married, or mad, or free: Wherever you are you’re likely glad, But memory troubles me. We could’ve had us children, We could’ve had a home— But you thought not, and I thought not, And these nine years we roam. Today I worked in the deep dark tanks, And climbed out to watch the sea: Gulls and salty waves pass by, And mountains of Araby. I’ve travelled the lonely oceans And wandered the lonely towns. I’ve learned a lot and lost a lot, And proved the world was round. Now if we’d stayed together, There’s much we’d never’ve known— But dreary books and weary lands Weigh on me like a stone. Indian Ocean, 1959

Seamen three! What men be ye? Gotham's three wise men we be. Whither in your bowl so free? To rake the moon from out the sea. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine. Who art thou, so fast adrift? I am he they call Old Care. Here on board we will thee lift. No: I may not enter there. Wherefore so? 'Tis Jove's decree, In a bowl Care may not be; In a bowl Care may not be. Fear ye not the waves that roll? No: in charmed bowl we swim. What the charm that floats the bowl? Water may not pass the brim. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine.

Must Sean Penn always look like he’s squeezing the last drops out of a sponge and the sponge is his face? Even the back of his head grimaces. Just the pressure in his little finger alone could kill a gorilla. Remember that kid whose whole trick was forcing blood into his head until he looked like the universe’s own cherry bomb so he’d get the first whack at the piñata? He’s grown up to straighten us all out about weapons of mass destruction but whatever you do, don’t ding his car door with yours. Don’t ask about his girlfriend’s cat. Somewhere a garbage truck beeps backing up and in these circumstances counts as a triumph of sanity. Sleet in the face, no toilet paper, regrets over an argument, not investing wisely, internment of the crazy mother, mistreatment of laboratory animals. Life, my friends, is ordinary crap. Pineapple slices on tutu-wearing toothpicks. Those puke bags in the seatback you might need. The second DVD only the witlessly bored watch. Some architectural details about Batman’s cape. Music videos about hairdos, tattoos, implants and bling. The crew cracking up over some actor’s flub.

Wandered tonight through a city as ruined as a body with broken ribs and a bared heart. Looked for you there with cookies in my pocket, searched for a sigh, for movement in demolished streets and alleys. Tonight since I’d forgotten for a moment where you are, I searched for you with hope in my bones. But no matter how I lured you with my voice and my eyes, walls of debris grew up steadily around you, cellars seemed to creep around you. I remained alone with those cookies in my pocket and kept calling and walking.

I'm writing upside down with the space pen, listening to the rain. My wife is writing about the Black Death and its effects on Art, and asks me “Where are your pants?” They are on the floor in front of our new couch, where I arrange them to spell out L-O-V-E. A vegetable, mystic thrill runs through me— the couch is something's antenna. It bears good love to us here over the laundromat. I'm waiting for the Light Beings to remove my roof. Our bedroom is lousy with clothes spelling out greetings if anyone's up there who can read English.

I was chasing this blue butterfly down the road when a car came by and clipped me. It was nothing serious, but it angered me and I turned around and cursed the driver who didn't even slow down to see if I was hurt. Then I returned my attention to the butterfly which was nowhere to be seen. One of the Doubleday girls came running up the street with her toy poodle toward me. I stopped her and asked, "Have you seen a blue butterfly around here?" "It's down near that birch tree near Grandpa's," she said. "Thanks," I said, and walked briskly toward the tree. It was fluttering from flower to flower in Mr. Doubleday's extensive garden, a celestial blueness to soothe the weary heart. I didn't know what I was doing there. I certain- ly didn't want to capture it. It was like something I had known in another life, even if it was only in a dream, I wanted to confirm it. I was a blind beggar on the streets of Cordoba when I first saw it, and now, again it was here.

I wondered if the others felt as heroic and as safe:my unmangled family slept while I slid uncertain feet ahead behind my flashlight’s beam. Stones, thick roots as twisted as a ruined body, what did I fear? I hoped my batteries had eight more lives than the lost child. I feared I’d find something. Reader, by now you must be sure you know just where we are, deep in symbolic woods. Irony, self-accusation, someone else’s suffering. The search is that of art. You’re wrong, though it’s an intelligent mistake. There was a real lost child. I don’t want to swaddle it in metaphor. I’m just a journalist who can’t believe in objectivity. I’m in these poems because I’m in my life. But I digress. A man four volunteers to the left of me made the discovery. We circled in like waves returning to the parent shock. You’ve read this far, you might as well have been there too. Your eyes accuse me of false chase. Come off it, you’re the one who thought it wouldn’t matter what we found. Though we came with lights and tongues thick in our heads, the issue was a human life. The child was still alive. Admit you’re glad.

I cover the eyes of Gena, 7, and Anushka, 2, as their father drops his trousers to be searched, and his flesh shakes, and around him: silence’s gross belly flaps. The crowd watches. The children watch us watch: soldiers drag the naked man up the staircase. I teach his children’s hands to make of anguish a language — see how deafness nails us into our bodies. Anushka speaks to homeless dogs as if they are men, speaks to men as if they are men and not just souls on crutches of bone. Townspeople watch children but feel under the bare feet of their thoughts the cold stone of the city.

For James Kim (1971 — 2006) it could have happened to any of us a wrong turn down a logging road tires tunneled into snow a man’s undying love for his children moves satellites maps aerial images eighteen care packages dropped over 16 miles of the Siskiyou, bearing handwritten notes from a father to his son the signs you left for those who came after you a red t-shirt a wool sock, a child’s blue skirt layers of a life, stripped down to a family’s fate — the weight of being unseen — to travel a path back to what you knew at birth, the warmth of being held close brought home