My daughter says six is her favorite year ever
though she suspects that seven will be better.
Her dress spins down the corridor.
It’s made of butterflies and billowing
like the memory of a chocolate souffle.
Was I ever more like her than like me,
shoulders not flagging, breath hot
with awe as I sidestepped each stone,
the promise of age like a helium balloon
dragging me behind it on a flouncy string?
My daughter tries to show me everything
she’s left a mark on: painted clay,
a smiley-faced cotton ball perched on a stick.
her name in all-caps on an envelope.
Does she already somewhere in her spleen
or pancreas, in the soft tissues and marrow, sense
that the impossible goal is, for all of us,
just to keep going? No, she is not grieving
over Goldengrove whatever. Six is her favorite 
year ever, I feel not so much nostalgia
as Sehnsucht, the desire for something
missing, vertigo under the infinite sky. 
We crane our twin heads as a falcon or drone
pierces the cloud cover into the future.
How to get closer to the mystery.
Older, she will do whatever: name a new nation,
isolate a microbe, hear the whales mutter
the muscadine water. Every time the regimes change
she will dance Swan Lake, bending her knees
at the requisite intervals. Attagirl, daughter! 
The economy continues to show resilience
in the face of despair and mass depredation.
My daughter is swan. Is crab grass run riot.
Meanwhile, I am becoming unrecognizable
to everyone except myself, and it does not matter:
before it is time to resemble no one
I have had the mixed fortune to resemble most things.
My shadow lingers in the corner of the photo of the painting.
I may not know more than a bedraggled llama
craning its neck past the impregnable fence. Still,
I participated in the world. I wore the ceremonial
knee breeches required by protocol.
Led her through ferry boats and Ferris wheels,
this ardent daughter clinging to my hand
as though it was God’s hand on a church ceiling.
We took turns licking the strawberry ice cream.
In this knowledge, I feel content.

Grateful for their tour
of the pharmacy,
the first-grade class
has drawn these pictures,
each self-portrait taped
to the window-glass,
faces wide to the street,
round and available,
with parallel lines for hair.

I like this one best: Brian,
whose attenuated name
fills a quarter of the frame,
stretched beside impossible
legs descending from the ball
of his torso, two long arms
springing from that same
central sphere. He breathes here,

on his page. It isn’t craft
that makes this figure come alive;
Brian draws just balls and lines,
in wobbly crayon strokes.
Why do some marks
seem to thrill with life,
possess a portion
of the nervous energy
in their maker’s hand?

That big curve of a smile
reaches nearly to the rim
of his face; he holds
a towering ice cream,
brown spheres teetering
on their cone,
a soda fountain gift
half the length of him
—as if it were the flag

of his own country held high
by the unadorned black line
of his arm. Such naked support
for so much delight! Artless boy,
he’s found a system of beauty:
he shows us pleasure
and what pleasure resists.
The ice cream is delicious.
He’s frail beside his relentless standard.

Late August morning I go out to cut
spent and faded hydrangeas—washed
greens, russets, troubled little auras

of sky as if these were the very silks
of Versailles, mottled by rain and ruin
then half-restored, after all this time …

When I come back with my handful
I realize I’ve accidentally locked the door,
and can’t get back into the house.

The dining room window’s easiest;
crawl through beauty bush and spirea,
push aside some errant maples, take down

the wood-framed screen, hoist myself up.
But how, exactly, to clamber across the sill
and the radiator down to the tile?

I try bending one leg in, but I don’t fold
readily; I push myself up so that my waist
rests against the sill, and lean forward,

place my hands on the floor and begin to slide
down into the room, which makes me think
this was what it was like to be born:

awkward, too big for the passageway …
Negotiate, submit?
                           When I give myself
to gravity there I am, inside, no harm,

the dazzling splotchy flowerheads
scattered around me on the floor.
Will leaving the world be the same

—uncertainty as to how to proceed,
some discomfort, and suddenly you’re
—where? I am so involved with this idea

I forget to unlock the door,
so when I go to fetch the mail, I’m locked out
again. Am I at home in this house,

would I prefer to be out here,
where I could be almost anyone?
This time it’s simpler: the window-frame,

the radiator, my descent. Born twice
in one day!
                In their silvered jug,
these bruise-blessed flowers:

how hard I had to work to bring them
into this room. When I say spent,
I don’t mean they have no further coin.

If there are lives to come, I think
they might be a littler easier than this one.

A white curtain turning in an open window. 

A swan, dipping a white neck in the trees’ shadow, 
Hardly beating the water with golden feet. 

Sorrow before her 
Was gone like noise from a street, 
Snow falling. 

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

All our windows open, steady drizzle on the kudzu’s 
broad backs, birds making their music like this isn’t North 
Carolina, but a tropical rainforest, and we’re somewhere 
deep in the palms and vines. But it’s our own ferns and fiddleheads, 
evergreens and sugar maples, trillium blooming, or on the verge, 
for no one in particular, for everyone in particular, as if to say, 
Go on, enjoy it. Rain, flowers, time on earth. The apple I  
hand-picked at the market. Braiding my friend’s hair, silver  
in my fingers, how I tie a tiny bow gently at the end 
just as the sun comes out. I want to believe this is true power, that 
kindness is the only weapon worth wielding, and I wield it, 
land blow after blow to my enemies, without mercy. 
Mercy. Bring the wine. Set the table for surprise guests.  
No matter the plates don’t match and we’ve run out of chairs, 
only that there is bread and laughter, enough to go around. 
Parades, in spite of—Pride, in spite of—Please, someone answer all my 
questions about hummingbirds and the little futures we are 
reaching for, the ones rising above the horizon right before our eyes,  
such intoxicating visions, our truest selves, with nothing to hide. Go on. 
Trust the child standing barefoot in the rain, her face turned 
up to the sky. Trust that crescendo building in your chest is your 
voice, singing what you need to hear, the stone-heavy echo 
welled from darkest springs. Go ahead. Open the door. No one can 
explain how to love the world. It doesn’t happen all at once. But 
you can start here. Tonight, with yourself. Someone near you. Let it go 
zigzagging town to town. Look, there. It’s already coming back around.

An act can be many things at once. 
We can be deliverers or takers both.

Was he saying thank you to the airbags, 
thank you to the chassis for its metal

promise to stop the impact short of 
breath and body and the bureaucracy

of the outside world. Praising all of it 
today. Praising the collision recalculated

that it could have been worse. Where 
is poetry if it is not at the base of

the wreck. Rich said it clearly. So clear 
we could see the ocean’s bottom

as if the glass had been emptied out 
from one last sip. My son and then

my other son and then the one 
who knows what I’m talking about. 

What if I say I want this poem to bless 
you, the reader. Will you take it? Will

you trust that it, line by line, truly 
means to protest harm, means well?

I want to be surrounded by splendor, but beauty is capitalism. This is to say
purchase power is how I was taught to love things & now I am exiled
in a country where living is only spectacle & roses, never bread.
How do I feed a village when my only skill is personal acquisition, not
distribution? My god, how wrong I was to covet dresses over firearms,
poetry books over agriculture. Ross sends me sunchokes from his garden
& I squint my eyes at them, trying to imagine the texture of drawing
food from the earth—my hands in dirt turn into rope pulling Good & asking
for forgiveness. They are killing us & we are all just going to the office,
watching tv & ordering out. I thought we were supposed to be resisting.
The deaths will accumulate like the snow & we will all be forced to forfeit
our lives for the revolution. I’m tired of hearing how nuanced it all is. It’s not.
They say it has everything to do with money & power, but what they want
us to forget is that it is about how we love. We are fighting for the right to
 

spend a storm inside
making soup & sourdough
& no one gets shot—

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

    Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

    Of deities or mortals, or of both,

        In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

    What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

        What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

    Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

    Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

    Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

        Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;

    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

        For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

    Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

    For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

    For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

        For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

    That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,

        A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

    To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

    And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

    Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

        Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

    Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

        Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

    Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!

    When old age shall this generation waste,

        Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

    “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all

        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

I think Cliff Swallow sounds like the name
of a beige-clad mortgage broker who hangs
out at the bar and doesn’t talk politics, but
it’s a bird I’m reading about to keep my mind
from diving fast into the abyss. If someone asked
what changed me first, I’d say love. Secondly,
I’d say death. Does the order matter? When I took
to birds I thought I’d be destroyed by staring
at flying, twittering blurs, but what destroys me
is what always destroys me. A friend once said,
every elegy is a love poem and every love poem
is an elegy. But there must be a difference. Trying
once to identify swallows darting in and out
of the shadows above the creek water slick with
reflections of willows and white alders above us,
I asked a friend,  What kind of swallows are those?
He squinted, and we all watched, the sky’s mirror
rippling in the shallow creek bed, the wet rocks
emerging like islands we might retire to when we
shrink into nothing.  Fast ones, he said, turning,
and shrugged. So much for the naming. Instead
a pointing to the flitting minutes so they lasted,
until they didn’t. Then all of us leaned over
the railing and stared at the quickly thinning light
and all that the light contained, all of us calmly
unable to distinguish, to classify, but we could
show each other the whole view, practically
holding each other by the collar so no one
drowned, as we watched every last fast
flyer swoop, yes, we praised what lives and what
disappears, we made use of the end of the light.

A desert of weed and water-darkened stone under my western windows
The ebb lasted all afternoon,
And many pieces of humanity, men, women, and children, gathering shellfish,
Swarmed with voices of gulls the sea-breach.
At twilight they went off together, the verge was left vacant, an evening heron
Bent broad wings over the black ebb,
And left me wondering why a lone bird was dearer to me than many people.
Well: rare is dear: but also I suppose
Well reconciled with the world but not with our own natures we grudge to see them
Reflected on the world for a mirror.