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Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep; It was past twelve on a mid-winter night, When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep; There, with much work to do before the light, We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang, And droning shells burst with a hollow bang; We were soaked, chilled and wretched, every one; Darkness; the distant wink of a huge gun. I turned in the black ditch, loathing the storm; A rocket fizzed and burned with blanching flare, And lit the face of what had been a form Floundering in mirk. He stood before me there; I say that He was Christ; stiff in the glare, And leaning forward from His burdening task, Both arms supporting it; His eyes on mine Stared from the woeful head that seemed a mask Of mortal pain in Hell’s unholy shine. No thorny crown, only a woollen cap He wore—an English soldier, white and strong, Who loved his time like any simple chap, Good days of work and sport and homely song; Now he has learned that nights are very long, And dawn a watching of the windowed sky. But to the end, unjudging, he’ll endure Horror and pain, not uncontent to die That Lancaster on Lune may stand secure. He faced me, reeling in his weariness, Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear. I say that He was Christ, who wrought to bless All groping things with freedom bright as air, And with His mercy washed and made them fair. Then the flame sank, and all grew black as pitch, While we began to struggle along the ditch; And someone flung his burden in the muck, Mumbling: ‘O Christ Almighty, now I’m stuck!’

Having been tenant long to a rich lord, Not thriving, I resolvèd to be bold, And make a suit unto him, to afford A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old. In heaven at his manor I him sought; They told me there that he was lately gone About some land, which he had dearly bought Long since on earth, to take possessiòn. I straight returned, and knowing his great birth, Sought him accordingly in great resorts; In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts; At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth Of thieves and murderers; there I him espied, Who straight,Your suit is granted, said, and died.

1    The dragons on the back of a circular bronze mirror swirl without end. I sit and am an absorbing form: I absorb the outline of a snowy owl on a branch, the rigor mortis in a hand. I absorb the crunching sounds when you walk across a glacial lake with aquamarine ice heaved up here and there twenty feet high. I absorb the moment a jeweler pours molten gold into a cuttlefish mold and it begins to smoke. I absorb the weight of a pause when it tilts the conversation in a room. I absorb the moments he sleeps holding her right breast in his left hand and know it resembles glassy waves in a harbor in descending spring light. Is the mind a mirror? I see pig carcasses piled up from the floor on a boat docked at Wanxian and the cook who smokes inadvertently drops ashes into soup. I absorb the stench of burning cuttlefish bone, and as moments coalesce see to travel far is to return. 2    A cochineal picker goes blind; Mao, swimming across the Yangtze River, was buoyed by underwater frogmen; in the nursing home, she yelled, “Everyone here has Alzheimer’s!” it blistered his mouth; they thought the tape of erhu solos was a series of spy messages; finding a bag of piki pushpinned to the door; shapes of saguaros by starlight; a yogi tries on cowboy boots at a flea market; a peregrine falcon shears off a wing; her niece went through the house and took what she wanted; “The sooner the better”; like a blindman grinding the bones of a snow leopard; she knew you had come to cut her hair; suffering: this and that: iron 26, gold 79; they dared him to stare at the annular eclipse; the yellow pupils of a saw-whet owl. 3    The gold shimmer at the beginning of summer dissolves in a day. A fly mistakes a gold spider, the size of a pinhead, at the center of a glistening web. A morning mushroom knows nothing of twilight and dawn? Instead of developing a navy, Ci Xi ordered architects to construct a two-story marble boat that floats on a lotus-covered lake. Mistake a death cap for Caesar’s amanita and in hours a hepatic hole opens into the sky. To avoid yelling at his pregnant wife, a neighbor installs a boxing bag in a storeroom; he periodically goes in, punches, punches, reappears and smiles. A hummingbird moth hovers and hovers at a woman wearing a cochineal-dyed flowery dress. Liu Hansheng collects hypodermic needles, washes them under a hand pump, dries them in sunlight, seals them in Red Cross plastic bags, resells them as sterilized new ones to hospitals. 4    Absorb a corpse-like silence and be a brass cone at the end of a string beginning to mark the x of stillness. You may puzzle as to why a meson beam oscillates, or why galaxies appear to be simultaneously redshifting in all directions, but do you stop to sense death pulling and pulling from the center of the earth to the end of the string? A mother screams at her son, “You’re so stupid,” but the motion of this anger is a circle. A teen was going to attend a demonstration, but his parents, worried about tear gas, persuaded him to stay home: he was bludgeoned to death that afternoon by a burglar. I awake dizzy with a searing headache thinking what nightmare did I have that I cannot remember only to discover the slumlord dusted the floor with roach powder. 5    Moored off Qingdao, before sunrise, the pilot of a tanker is selling dismantled bicycles. Once, a watchmaker coated numbers on the dial with radioactive paint and periodically straightened the tip of the brush in his mouth. Our son sights the North Star through a straw taped to a protractor so that a bolt dangling from a string marks the latitude. I remember when he said his first word, “Clock”; his 6:02 is not mine, nor is your 7:03 his. We visit Aurelia in the nursing home and find she is sleeping curled in a fetal position. A chain-smoking acupuncturist burps, curses; a teen dips his head in paint thinner. We think, had I this then that would, but subjunctive form is surge and ache. Yellow dips of chamisa are flaring open. I drop a jar of mustard, and it shatters in a wave. 6    The smell of roasted chili; descending into the epilimnion; the shape of a datura leaf; a bank robber superglued his fingertips; in the lake, ocean-seal absorption; a moray snaps up a scorpion fish; he had to mistake and mistake; burned popcorn; he lifted the fly agaric off of blue paper and saw a white galaxy; sitting in a cold sweat; a child drinking Coke out of a formula bottle has all her teeth capped in gold; chrysanthemum-shaped fireworks exploding over the water; red piki passed down a ladder; laughter; as a lobster mold transforms a russula into a delicacy; replicating an Anasazi yucca fiber and turkey-feather blanket. 7    He looks at a series of mirrors: Warring States Western Han, Eastern Han, Tang, Song, and notices bits of irregular red corrosion on the Warring States mirror. On the back, three dragons swirl in mist and April air. After sixteen years that first kiss still has a flaring tail. He looks at the TLV pattern on the back of the Han mirror: the mind has diamond points east, south, west, north. He grimaces and pulls up a pile of potatoes, notices snow clouds coming in from the west. She places a sunflower head on the northwest corner of the fence. He looks at the back of the Tang mirror: the lion and grape pattern is so wrought he turns, watches her pick eggplant, senses the underlying twist of pleasure and surprise that in mind they flow and respond endlessly. 8    I find a rufous hummingbird on the floor of a greenhouse, sense a redshifting along the radial string of a web. You may draw a cloud pattern in cement setting in a patio, or wake to sparkling ferns melting on a windowpane. The struck, plucked, bowed, blown sounds of the world come and go. As first light enters a telescope and one sees light of a star when the star has vanished, I see a finch at a feeder, beans germinating in darkness; a man with a pole pulls yarn out of an indigo vat, twists and untwists it; I hear a shout as a child finds Boletus barrowsii

Let’s go out and buy something. In the sun. No, let’s stay home and make something, the sun floods the room. It could be green, on paper. It could be money. That’s the way to create new matter. That’s how I detach boats from moorings—my boat, my mooring— the harbor shallow in low tide skiff propelled over buffeting sands flats on sheer puissance.

Feet firmly perch thinnest stalks, reeds, bulrush. Until all at once, they attend my female form, streaked throat, brownness. Three fly equidistant around me, flashing. Each, in turn, calls territorial trills, beckons ok-a-li, ok-a-li! Spreads his wings, extends inner muscle quivering red epaulet bands uniquely bolden. Turn away each suitor, mind myself my audience. Select another to consider, He in turn quiver thrills. Leave for insects. Perhaps one male follows. Maybe a few brood of young, line summertime. Silver Maple samaras wing wind, spread clusters along with mine, renewing Prairie. As summer closes, I leave dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies, mosquitoes, moths, spiders, crickets for grain, see, Sunflower; join thousands to flock Sky— grackles, blackbirds, cowbirds,     starlings— Swarming like distant smoke clouds, rising.

Some lamp sputters its dusty light across some desk. Some hand, shaking, works the strained rope, twisting and knifing, weaving, tugging tight a bellowing circle. Randy Travis, steamy drawl and hiccup on the staticky AM, backs the ritual of drooping loop. Sweat drips an awful hallelujah. God glares askance, but the artist doesn’t waver—wrists click cadence, knots become a path to what makes saviors. The sagging hoop bemoans a need to squeeze, its craving for a breath within the ring.

I said no to you so often, couldn't see. Do you know how that changed you —divided what you saw in me or anything (if you did) from what you said or mostly didn't? And another bottle drained, your head lolling off the chair's back, the mirror's face blacked.

This was my gig: white lace apron, cut-out bra and crop. I crouched above him every Thursday in the marble bathroom, pissed on his bare chest as let him lick me dry. He wasn’t the first to love the thought of the redness of a bottom, mark of a heel. So when my ex dropped three tabs of sunshine and decided I’d screwed his best friend, I thought I knew what to expect. Hadn’t the drag queen across the street, pistol-whipped, sat silent on her folded raincoat?There is nothing anyone can do

This old house lodges no ghosts! Those swaggering specters who found their way Across the Atlantic Were left behind With their old European grudges In the farmhouses of New England And Pennsylvania Like so much jettisoned baggage Too heavy To lug over the Piedmont. The flatlands are inhospitable To phantoms. Here Shadows are sharp and arbitrary Not mazy, obscure, Cowering in corners Behind scary old boots in a cupboard Or muffled in empty coats, deserted By long-dead cousins (Who appear now and then But only in photographs Already rusting at the edges)— Setting out in the creaking wagon Tight-lipped, alert to move on, The old settlers had no room For illusions. Their dangers were real. Now in the spare square house Their great-grandchildren Tidy away the past Until the polished surfaces Reflect not apparitions, pinched, Parched, craving, unsatisfied, But only their own faces.

I found a weed that had a mirror in it and that mirror looked in at a mirror in me that had a weed in it