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The pond is sheathed in ice, a duck troubles the reeds, the air around us still enough to hear the baby stir, but we don’t know where it is yet. By the force of our longing it is getting made for us, as thrilled people, palms full of seed, long for the chickadees to light, and they do. Light.

The fenestrate surface of the pond surfaces in old companions     snag ripples namely, Saburo I recommend his face for the pond museum above the fox’s skulking face the hare’s face, death’s polished stone the crane’s     larval pearl eyes transmitting the code for a sodden voice in the splintering reeds And when I say I recommend I mean the menagerie in the utmost dark saviors hung from supping trees gone the way of idiot flesh—where you were endowed with a chance, and fucked up Evening, I went down on the pantry, pried open a basket of rice cakes, grew partial to eating in the dark if only to concentrate the sound of walking through the wilderness at night, enlarged without people as wax I sleep in nectar When was the flora brass A woman kneeling among cranes Willows waiting for sticks to arrive to burn cranes from her body genital wind through which No, it has always been this way blooms erupting suspicion, husband making sure each dawn the sticks stay lashed to his back, the wood she waits for thin as blades, and cut as close To fallow soil sea dragon in hand proper, yes, though petrified crimson, pink, indigo, green purple and yellow     lotus cradle in the hedgerow I feel faint     exceptionally hot      here on the ground Should I be sweating this much? Should the sea dragon weigh so heavily? Bronze skin festooning the trees cutting a spirit loose? Carrion flowers slip from my hand

Snapping turtles in the pond eat bass, sunfish, and frogs. They do us no harm when we swim. But early this spring two Canada geese lingered, then built a nest. What I’d heard of, our neighbor feared: goslings, as they paddle about, grabbed from below by a snapper, pulled down to drown. So he stuck hunks of fat on huge, wire-leadered hooks attached to plastic milk-bottle buoys. The first week he caught three turtles and still there are more: sometimes he finds the bottles dragged ashore, the wire wrapped several times around a pine trunk and the steel hook wrenched straight as a pin.

Cold, wet leaves Floating on moss-coloured water And the croaking of frogs— Cracked bell-notes in the twilight.

Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you—banded one?

My embarrassment at his nakedness, at the pool’s edge, and my wife, with his, standing, watching— this was a freedom not given me who am more naked, less contained by my own white flesh and the ability to take quietly what comes to me. The sense of myself separate, grew a white mirror in the quiet water he breaks with his hands and feet, kicking, pulls up to land on the edge by the feet of these women who must know that for each man is a speech describes him, makes the day grow white and sure, a quietness of water in the mind, lets hang, descriptive as a risk, something for which he cannot find a means or time.

At this hour the soul floats weightlessly through the city streets, speechless and invisible, astonished by the smoky blend of grays and golds seeping out of the air, the dark half-tones of dusk suddenly filling the urban sky while the body sits listlessly by the window sullen and heavy, too exhausted to move, too weary to stand up or to lie down. At this hour the soul is like a yellow wing slipping through the treetops, a little ecstatic cloud hovering over the sidewalks, calling out to the approaching night, “Amaze me, amaze me,” while the body sits glumly by the window listening to the clear summons of the dead transparent as glass, clairvoyant as crystal. Some nights it is almost ready to join them. Oh, this is a strange, unlikely tethering, a furious grafting of the quick and the slow: when the soul flies up, the body sinks down and all night—locked in the same cramped room— they go on quarreling, stubbornly threatening to leave each other, wordlessly filling the air with the sound of a low internal burning. How long can this bewildering marriage last? At midnight the soul dreams of a small fire of stars flaming on the other side of the sky, but the body stares into an empty night sheen, a hollow-eyed darkness. Poor luckless angels, feverish old loves: don’t separate yet. Let what rises live with what descends.

Give me something to eat, Good people, I pray; I have really not had One mouthful today! I am hungry and cold, And last night I dreamed A scarecrow had caught me— Good land, how I screamed! Of one little children And six ailing wives (No, one wife and six children), Not one of them thrives. So pity my case, Dear people, I pray; I’m honest, and really I’ve come a long way.

what a saint you are, shining on everything, drawn to the world like flames are to moths, like honey to bees. So readily do you dole yourself out, and in such abundance so that we might operate our otherwise redundant eyes. For they’d be useless even as shiny bibelots that studded the otherwise dull surfaces of faces. No, in your absence, in that total darkness the eyes wouldn’t see or even be seen. And they would soon shrivel up and desiccate, die out from pointlessness like the little toe will (unless we can find a way to reverse its long decline). Hey, plump eyes! Isn’t it time you put your tiny wet hands together for the light!

Poor old lady, she swallowed a fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a spider. It squirmed and wriggled and turned inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a bird. How absurd!   She swallowed a bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a cat. Thank of that!   She swallowed a cat. She swallowed the cat to catch the bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a dog. She went the whole hog when she swallowed the dog. She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a cow. I don't know how she swallowed a cow. She swallowed the cow to catch the dog, She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a horse. She died, of course.