^{for Can}

I love the slow, tender
hooved gallop behind my left
nipple & how it turns me
into less a prisoner; prisoner
once, now a man less burdened 
by time. I love the rust & callous, the half
of it that makes me weep.
I love my lashes like scimitars,
the scar above my left eye
shaped by a fallen tree branch
& staring too long at the sun. I love
how g-d outlasts belief. I love 
the tooth chipped sliding along
the stone of a mango; 
the brokenness my body coupling 
with hers won’t fashion. I love 
the ridge that parts my bald head.
The days of whisky pickling
my liver. I love eleven rings
on my fingers. The two moons
on each fingernail. I love
all my eclipses. How my history 
begs for song from crackheads 
& soothsayers. I love this prayer,
this sin-eater or ghost or madman
humming to my soul. I love discursive 
& juxtaposition & the alchemy turning 
words into the only parachutes 
I long for. This body long been 
a troubled river. I love the storm. 
The weary. The thousand wild
cicadas. I love every invention,
every windmill turned monster.
I love how I know the deluge; 
how most likely I shall see it coming; 
or if, the empty of its absence. I love 
these two livers. This sac of humor,
this broken vinyl scratched
& spinning, & that one paladin
who refuses to let me be lonely.

^{i.m. Paula Merwin}

All this time, I felt like I had to describe 
the things I did, and what was done to me,
how I had to wander a strange world for years, 
needing to be busy, sleeping in strange beds, 
searching through cities for chapels to weep in, 
learning the stitches that keep a ripped heart 
together for a while, when what I really need 
to say is that it rained all night and morning, 
and the drops were a percussion on the trees,
and after the sun rose, I saw an insect land on the railing 
and take shelter, and a bird drank from a leaf. 
Wild pigs exploded from the bushes where they’d hid,
and the sage in the bowl smelt of memory and musk.
A toad sat—still as any god—on the wet stone.

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.

I set out in the blue American
night, this stupid sparkler
raised in my fist. Electroshocked
dandelion. Smoke columns
over the sock factory giving the moon
that Inness blur. No we’re not
falling. Things are just floating back
where they belong. The brushstroke of seafoam
in the painter’s dream
as he lies in bed dying. Where
does it go? The sparkler lends
my hospital gown a county-fair
glow. I carry it across
the parking lot. Where her Toyota
idles in the wrong
century. Slipping it in
my mother’s mouth 
I tell her
she can go anywhere, be anyone
in this vast, possible land now
that she’s a ghost—the freest
thing I know.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o’er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the mouldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
        Creeping where no life is seen,
        A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
And a staunch old heart has he.
How closely he twineth, how tight he clings,
To his friend the huge Oak Tree!
And slily he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,
As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
The rich mould of dead men’s graves.
        Creeping where grim death hath been,
        A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant, in its lonely days,
Shall fatten upon the past:
For the stateliest building man can raise
Is the Ivy’s food at last.
        Creeping on, where time has been,
        A rare old plant is the Ivy green.