Works & Loves

1 Rain fell as a glass breaks, something suddenly everywhere at the same time. 2 To live like a painting looked into from more than one angle at once — eye to eye with the doorway, down at the hair, up at your own dusty feet. 3 “This is your house,” said my bird heart to my heart of the cricket, and I entered. 4 The happy see only happiness, the living see only life, the young see only the young, as lovers believe they wake always beside one also in love. 5 However often I turned its pages, I kept ending up as the same two sentences of the book: The being of some is: to be. Of others: to be without. Then I fell back asleep, in Swedish. 6 A sheep grazing is unimpressed by the mountain but not by its flies. 7 The grief of what hasn’t yet happened — a door closed from inside. The weight of the grass dividing an ant’s five-legged silence walking through it. 8 What is the towel, what is the water, changes, though of we three, only the towel can be held upside down in the sun. 9 “I was once.” Said not in self-pity or praise. This dignity we allow barn owl, ego, oyster.