Neighbors saying our face is the same, but I know
Toward my daughter, he lurches like a brother
On the playground. He won’t turn apart from her,

Confounded. I never fought for so much—
My daughter; my son swaggers about her.
They are so small. And I, still, am a young man.

They play. He is not yet incarcerated.

The blackened wooden Buddha on my desk

is missing fingers on a chipped left hand

that cups the air, pacific face in dusk

gazing at zero as if to understand

how liquid time might freeze in his robe’s form,

like folded icicles. But, no. The world

deliquesces and flows like sewage whirled

through pipes and frothing sewers and out storm

drains, gathering in the North Pacific Gyre

––plastic bags like jellyfish, ghost nets,

the small white finger bones of cigarettes,

and polymers and sludge and other mire

that is our legacy of floating loss,

nibbled by pelicans and albatross.

 

The sea is so far from us now. Partly I think because we 
are not softspoken desire. There are rude thoroughfares
and abandoned mines that brag. They gather and pile
with ruin and vacancy. It’s an accrual that is in me, it seems. 
At best, a wetland. Beautiful and useless in the face of flood. 
So that when we walk the perimeter, we can see the ground 
starve and crack. But then fear of sinkhole is so self-important.
Truthfully, I am not enough to steer clear of. To fall in love again, 
dear, reforested bund, is a matter of preservation. In your expert 
opinion, will you tell me how to know you if I am forever meant 
to leave you undisturbed. This will not save us, I’m afraid. A brownstone 
for hummingbirds is shortsighted too, like picking out honeybees 
from the dog’s mouth. Then blowing on her tiny hairs like a breeze. 
Love, we can wish it were so; it does not make us fit to survive.

Little maidens, when you look
On this little story-book,
Reading with attentive eye
Its enticing history,
Never think that hours of play
Are your only HOLIDAY,
And that in a HOUSE of joy
Lessons serve but to annoy:
If in any HOUSE you find
Children of a gentle mind,
Each the others pleasing ever—
Each the others vexing never—
Daily work and pastime daily
In their order taking gaily—
Then be very sure that they
Have a life of HOLIDAY.

Elizabeth it is in vain you say
"Love not" — thou sayest it in so sweet a way:
In vain those words from thee or L.E.L.
Zantippe's talents had enforced so well:
Ah! if that language from thy heart arise,
Breath it less gently forth — and veil thine eyes.
Endymion, recollect, when Luna tried
To cure his love — was cured of all beside —
His follie — pride — and passion — for he died.