In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against 
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud 
rises up silently like dark bread.

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.

I can’t see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything

in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,

including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,

bare child’s feet on the scorched floorboards
(I can almost see)
in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts

and grubby yellow T-shirt
holding my cindery, non-existent,
radiant flesh. Incandescent.

I do not know the ocean’s song, 
    Or what the brooklets say; 
At eve I sit and listen long, 
    I cannot learn their lay. 
But as I linger by the sea, 
    And that sweet song comes unto me, 
It seems, my love, it sings of thee.

I do not know why poppies grow, 
    Amid the wheat and rye, 
The lilies bloom as white as snow, 
    I cannot tell you why. 
But all the flowers of the spring, 
    The bees that hum, the birds that sing, 
A thought of you they seem to bring.

I cannot tell why silvery Mars, 
    Moves through the heav’ns at night; 
I cannot tell you why the stars, 
    Adorn the vault with light. 
But what sublimity I see, 
    Upon the mount, the hill, the lea, 
It brings, my love, a thought of thee.

I do not know what in your eyes, 
    That caused my heart to glow, 
And why my spirit longs and cries, 
    I vow, I do not know. 
But when you first came in my sight, 
    My slumbering soul awoke in light, 
And since the day I’ve known no night.

How nearly can I  
inhabit someone  
else’s body? I don’t  
have any money.  
Prostrate, scrolling  
through other people’s  
clothes, I’m wearing  
the tearable pink dress 
I met you in. It came  
taped up in a box 
that smelled like house  
and once held water filters.  
These truncated mannequins  
I imagine angels appear as— 
headless torsos, voices  
emanating from necks— 
scare me like you did.  
Still I let divine will  
fill me like a windsock,  
commencing a delirious  
motion. Now my love is a line  
pulled by no current.  
Thanks for your purchase!  
wrote the woman in Queens 
on scalloped cardstock. 
Pulling her dress over  
my head, light sieved  
through sheer silk  
and I saw the threads  
binding my delight. 

^{—while being filmed on the North Pond} 

Looking through the lens for a close-up, 
he frames me, pond in the background. 

         I glimpse a red-winged blackbird light 
         above a cattail tuft. The filmmaker 

instructs, “Edge left, inside the shot.” 
How different to be watched (like last night 
  
         across the linen table from you, 
         to be seen, as if for the first time, 

and then to dip into the gleam 
of an ocean, your open gaze). 

         I long, instead, to cup the water 
         music, rising blackbird notes, mid-air. 

“Camera rolling,” he says. Lake-gusts 
sweep hair strands across my face. 

         “Please read your poem,  Ho’-e-ga/ 
         Snare, where you walk into the water.” 

Behind our shoot, a bus brakes, whooshes. 
A loud announcement. Filming’s cut. 

         I catch, between the reeds, the white-ringed 
         eye of the wood duck. Fledglings scoot. 

Further down the path, on rocks, a man proposes. 
While she accepts, a photographer snaps.