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I leave the formal garden of schedules where hours hedge me, clip the errant sprigs of thought, and day after day, a boxwood topiary hunt chases a green fox never caught. No voice calls me to order as I enter a dream of meadow, kneel to earth and, moving east to west, second the motion only of the sun. I plant frail seedlings in the unplowed field, trusting the wildness hidden in their hearts. Spring light sprawls across false indigo and hyssop, daisies, flax. Clouds form, dissolve, withhold or promise rain. In time, outside of time, the unkempt afternoons fill up with flowers.

Today I planted the sand cherry with red leaves— and hope that I can go on digging in this yard, pruning the grape vine, twisting the silver lace on its trellis, the one that bloomed just before the frost flowered over all the garden. Next spring I will plant more zinnias, marigolds, straw flowers, pearly everlasting, and bleeding heart. I plant that for you, old love, old friend, and lilacs for remembering.   The lily-of-the-valley with cream-colored bells, bent over slightly, bowing to the inevitable, flowers for a few days, a week. Now its broad blade leaves are streaked with brown and the stem dried to a pale hair. In place of the silent bells, red berries like rose hips blaze close to the ground. It is important for me to be down on my knees, my fingers sifting the black earth, making those things grow which will grow. Sometimes I save a weed if its leaves are spread fern-like, hand-like, or if it grows with a certain impertinence. I let the goldenrod stay and the wild asters. I save the violets in spring.   People who kill violets will do anything.

About the radiant heart of the matter, valencies drift

Now he has silver in him. When sometime Death shall boil down unnecessary fat To reach the nub of our identity, When in the run of crime The skull is rifled for the gold in teeth, And chemistry has eaten from the spine Superfluous life and vigor, why then he Will show a richness to be wondered at, And shall be thought a mine Whose claim and stake are stone and floral wreath. The body burns away, and burning gives Light to the eye and moisture to the lip And warmth to our desires, but it burns Whatever body lives Into extinction though it wear a plate Of armor in it: therefore do we thrive In fear of fire, in terror of the ship That carries us to fire. A soldier learns To bear the silver weight Where in his head the fire is most alive.

1 Indeed I must confess, When souls mix ’tis an happiness, But not complete till bodies too do join, And both our wholes into one whole combine; But half of heaven the souls in glory taste Till by love in heaven at last Their bodies too are placed. 2 In thy immortal part Man, as well as I, thou art. But something ’tis that differs thee and me, And we must one even in that difference be. I thee both as a man and woman prize, For a perfect love implies Love in all capacities. 3 Can that for true love pass When a fair woman courts her glass? Something unlike must in love’s likeness be: His wonder is one and variety. For he whose soul nought but a soul can move Does a new Narcissus prove, And his own image love. 4 That souls do beauty know ’Tis to the body’s help they owe; If when they know’t they straight abuse that trust And shut the body from’t, ’tis as unjust As if I brought my dearest friend to see My mistress and at th’instant he Should steal her quite from me.

We dine at Adorno and return to my Beauvoir. She compliments me on my Bachelard pad. I pop in a Santayana CD and Saussure back to the couch. On my way, I pull out two fine Kristeva wine glasses. I pour some Merleau-Ponty and return the Aristotle to Descartes. After pausing an Unamuno, I wrap my arm around her Hegel. Her hair smells of wild Lukacs and Labriola. Our small talk expands to include Dewey, Moore and Kant. I confess to her what's in my Eckhart. We Locke. By this point, we're totally Blavatsky. We stretch out on the Schopenhauer. She slips out of her Lyotard and I fumble with my Levi-Strauss. She unhooks her Buber and I pull off my Spinoza. I run my finger along her Heraclitus as she fondles my Bacon. She stops to ask me if I brought any Kierkegaard. I nod. We Foucault. She lights a cigarette and compares Foucault to Lacan. I roll over and Derrida.

Raymond Roussel Two girls runaway from the Home.  They have a revolver in their possession.  The Sisters Of Our Lady have given up looking for them, returning in the night with soft candles. The sleek clouds have thrown their riders, and the bees are returning to the honey, the clover at the edge of the cliff black as eyelids, damp as blue mussels flexing at the moon. The girls look in the stolen mirror, then throw their shoes in the sea.  They take off one another’s dress, posing on the rocks that jut out over the faded water of the last days. The clover beat down from their splendid feet, the clover quiet like a vault.  Nearby in a ship named for early death, I drink wine like a city.  Anchored far off the continent of love. Strange, but bees do not die in their own honey, and how the dead are toted off, how the sweet moons are deposited in the catacombs. The clover at the edge of the sea like a chemise, place where animals have lain.  They help one another with their hair, their dresses blowing back to land.  They look over the cliff, spit on the beach.  Birds I have never seen going by.

We want to give ourselves away utterly but afterwards we resent it, it is the same with the sparrows, their eyes burn so coldly under the dusty pines, their small chests swell as they dispute a crumb, or the empty place where a seed was once: this is our law too, to peck and peck at the Self, to take turns being I, to die in a fierce sidelong glance, then to hold the entire forest in one tilt of a tufted head, to take flight suddenly and fuck in midair, tumbling upward.

It was a beach like all beaches, only perhaps more beautiful. And the sand was pink not red. We would arrive in caravans, hampers overflowing with food and drink like Aziz and his party on the way to Malabar. The colonials and their servants away on an outing. We would stop under thatch umbrellas, towels and tablecloths spread out against the sea. My mother in her skirted swim suit surrounded by fathers of other children, her olive skin lit through her straw hat. They would laugh and drink beer and leer while the children did the usual beach things, boring futile tunnels to China, running at waves and then away, daring each other to be swallowed. I would go out by the forbidden rocks and pick off oysters, then give them to the men to pry open, cover with lime juice and suck dry. Once, I saw my mother sucking an oyster out of another daddy’s hand. Her dappled face bobbed and smiled and her tongue searched the shell for pearls.

Our father liked to play a game. He played that he was dead. He took his thick black glasses off and stretched out on the bed. He wouldn’t twitch and didn’t snore or move in any way. He didn’t even seem to breathe! We asked,Are you okay? We tickled fingers up and down his huge, pink, stinky feet— He didn’t move; he lay as still as last year’s parakeet. We pushed our fingers up his nose, and wiggled them inside— Next, we peeled his eyelids back. Are you okay? we cried. I really thought he might be dead and not just playing possum, because his eyeballs didn’t twitch when I slid my tongue across ’em. He’s dead, we sobbed—but to be sure, I jabbed him in the jewels. He rose, like Jesus, from the dead, though I don’t think Jesus drools. His right hand lashed both right and left. His left hand clutched his scrotum. And the words he yelled—I know damn well I’m way too young to quote ’em.