I have eaten my dinner 

Do not despair

I have eaten my dinner and the Devil

When he comes will see

I have intact

A peripatetic philosophy

That prizes above all

Not fame

Not virtue

Never grace

But burnt asparagus                    red wine

Red wine like the red sky

The red slit of sky above you with

Salmon edges                    its holes

A turquoise belt at the horizon hiding

The woods I lie in

After a long walk

After a long walk through bramble                    pea shoots

Toasted old bread to dip

A creek warble                    short

Skirt shorter

After a long walk what is

Current                      what awaits 

What awaits

What will break

The thrall of the Devil
 

A man can’t die where there is no earth
 
because there will be no place
to bury him. His body is the sky
and understands the language of birds.
 
His body says the earth is made of everything
that has fallen from Heaven
 
while no one was looking. He promises
to defy gravity and then return home.
 
A man can’t reach for the sky and not feel
he is falling. It goes on forever and the birds
talk about the awesomeness of flight
 
while the oxen labor in the fields,
while the cows eat grass and dream
 
of slaughter. A man can’t talk about flight
because one day, there will be no sky,
just the body covered in earth.
 
And now the sky is empty of birds.
And now the earth is covered in flowers.

Whatever I care for, someone else loves it
more, deserves it more: the doe with her
whole mouth crushing the phlox or the seer
who adores my future, whereas I could

take it or leave it. I know I’ll disappear.
It won’t be glamorous. It won’t be like when
the Mona Lisa was stolen and the tourists all
lined up to pay their respects at the empty
spot on the wall of the Louvre.

I’ve never actually even seen the sky.
I’ve only ever seen effluents, seen wattage.

The only night I remember is the dinner
of neighbors at which a man I never
had met before said I don’t fear dying—

look at the past, people have been dying forever, and—

then he stopped and shook his head—
I drank too much. I was almost saying
that people have died forever and all
of them survived, but of course—he made
a hard laugh—God, of course they didn’t survive.

I am so small walking on the beach 
at night under the widening sky. 
The wet sand quickens beneath my feet 
and the waves thunder against the shore. 

I am moving away from the boardwalk 
with its colorful streamers of people 
and the hotels with their blinking lights. 
The wind sighs for hundreds of miles. 

I am disappearing so far into the dark 
I have vanished from sight. 
I am a tiny seashell 
that has secretly drifted ashore 

and carries the sound of the ocean 
surging through its body. 
I am so small now no one can see me. 
How can I be filled with such a vast love?