In South Philadelphia the b-ball hoops
in the playgrounds and parks mostly had no nets,
no nets on the rims—they’d been stolen
or ripped down after being torn by leaping teenagers.
When my son was a boy the difference mattered
because he loved basketball, he loved the Sixers,
he loved shooting baskets and there is beautiful satisfaction
when a good shot falls through the net—
“Swish” we said—“Nothin’ but net”—
and so as I moved around town I always noticed
where the hoops had nets
so Nick and I could shoot there.

The difference mattered.  Life should be a certain way
but often the right way becomes unavailable—
the nets disappear—you have to be alert
to find the courts where a perfect shot really does go
swish.  Life has disappointments
but you don’t want your boy to feel that life is
mainly or mostly disappointing
or that the Sixers on TV are absurdly far from his real life—

because he needs to believe
that life allows moments of sublimity—swish—

so even now when Nick is almost forty
wherever I see good intact nets on the rims
I make a mental note for half a second:
Nick and I could play here.
The difference matters.

^{—after Beenie Man and Derek Walcott}

who am i?
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m the cramped quarters
            of any vessel voyaging the sea
            with contraband and trafficked cargo
who am i?
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m the rum barrel hollowed out
            and beaten into percussion
who am i?
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m a pidgin picking its way
            into a creole—any savage tongue
            consumed again and again
            until it can be repeated
who am i? 
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m the plátano deep frying sweet
            in oil or i’m the plátano fry-smash-
            fried into tostones
who am i?
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m the hibiscus steamed
            with ginger and sugar
            and allspice and clove
who am i?
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m a field song morphing
            out each new generation’s lips
who am i? 
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m the pilón smashing
            plátano and garlic and chicarrón
            into mofongo or i’m the pilón
            grinding allspice and clove
            and fennel and cinnamon into a jerk
who am i? 
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m this tripped-up tongue
            tryna wind its way through
            english, spanish, and patois
            smashed and ground-up together
who am i? 
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m sugarcane fields burnt or i’m
            the the scotch bonnet burn
            in the curry chicken or
            i’m the ron añejo burning
            its way down the throat
who am i? 
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m a poco man jam
            morphing into a dembow
who am i? 
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m the poems chanted
            over and over on the slave ship
            until they all mishmash smashed
            into a whole new song
who am i?                   who am i?                   who am i?
            either i’m nobody or
            i’m all of the nations
            or i am no nation or i’m a
            singular, ephemeral nation—
            the one i sing into being with this
            savage tongue, the one that disappears
            as soon as the sound stops shaking
            in the ocean salt air

Yesterday it was still January and I drove home
and the roads were wet and the fields were wet
and a palette knife

had spread a slab of dark blue forestry across the hill.
A splashed white van appeared from a side road
then turned off and I drove on into the drab morning

which was mudded and plain and there was a kind of weary happiness
that nothing was trying to be anything much and nothing
was being suggested. I don’t know how else to explain

the calm of this grey wetness with hardly a glimmer of light or life,
only my car tyres swishing the lying water,
and the crows balanced and rocking on the windy lines.

^{After Amiri Baraka and Stefania Gomez}

Poems are bullshit unless they are broken 
like a horse, like a dog kicked in the ribs, 
Like your favorite toy that’s missing an arm.

Love can make you feel used.
I want the poem that limps back to me.
Poems should hurt like love,
like ice water on your teeth
like a massage to smooth out a cramped muscle.

Give me the poem that’s like leather.
Give me the poem that smells like gasoline.
I want a poem that is a warning,
a poem that makes me check to see
if I left the shotgun by the door,
a poem that’s a runny nose, a sneeze, a poem
that’s the moment the sky turns green.

will poetry change the world? no one asks
this about football, the thrill of watching or
playing. we get that nurses & doctors are
healers. no question that rabbis, priests, &

imams guide individuals & groups through
spiritual thickets. we don’t tell cooks to put
down their wooden spoons & go make a real
difference instead of a real soufflé. teachers

are honored for the learning they impart. so
let poets keep on exciting passion in them-
selves & others. don’t discourage us from our
efforts to diagnose the human heart or create

trail markers for those coming behind us on
this journey. trust me when i say that poetry
heals, guides, feeds, & enlivens. poetry may
not change the world, but might change you.

(Mather AFB, California, 1956)

When we play horses at recess, my name
is Moonlily and I’m a yearling mare.
We gallop circles around the playground,
whinnying, neighing, and shaking our manes.
We scrape the ground with scuffed saddle oxfords,
thunder around the little kids on swings
and seesaws, and around the boys’ ball games.
We’re sorrel, chestnut, buckskin, pinto, gray,
a herd in pastel dresses and white socks.
We’re self-named, untamed, untouched, unridden.
Our plains know no fences. We can smell spring.
The bell produces metamorphosis.
Still hot and flushed, we file back to our desks,
one bay in a room of palominos.

^{to Mary Rose}

Here is our little yard  

too small            for a pool  
or chickens   let alone 

a game of tag or touch 
football       Then 

again   this stub-  
born patch  

of crabgrass  is just 
big enough      to get down  

flat on our backs 
with eyes wide open    and face 

the whole gray sky  just 
as a good drizzle 

begins                   I know  
we’ve had a monsoon  

of grieving to do  
which is why  

I promise    to lie 
beside you  

for as long as you like  
or need  

We’ll let our elbows 
kiss     under the downpour  

until we’re soaked  
like two huge nets  
                    left  

beside the sea  
whose heavy old

ropes strain  
stout with fish 

If we had to     we could  
feed a multitude  

with our sorrows  
If we had to  

we could name   a loss  
for every other  

drop of rain   All these  
foreign flowers 

you plant from pot  
to plot  

with muddy fingers  
—passion, jasmine, tuberose—  

we’ll sip 
the dew from them  

My darling                here
is the door I promised  

Here
is our broken bowl Here  

                        my hands  
In the home of our dreams  

the windows open  
in every  

weather—doused  
or dry—May we never  

be so parched 

To be a good
ex/current friend for R. To be one last

inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship
advice for L. To be advice

for my mother. To be a more comfortable
hospital bed for my mother. To be

no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time,
America for my uncle, who wants to be China

for me. To be a country of trafficless roads
& a sports car for my aunt, who likes to go

fast. To be a cyclone
of laughter when my parents say

their new coworker is like that, they can tell
because he wears pink socks, see, you don’t, so you can’t,

can’t be one of them. To be the one
my parents raised me to be—

a season from the planet
of planet-sized storms.

To be a backpack of PB&J & every
thing I know, for my brothers, who are becoming

their own storms. To be, for me, nobody,
homebody, body in bed watching TV. To go 2D

& be a painting, an amateur’s hilltop & stars,
simple decoration for the new apartment

with you. To be close, J.,
to everything that is close to you—

blue blanket, red cup, green shoes
with pink laces.

To be the blue & the red.
The green, the hot pink.

If every bomb 
Appeared in the sky a dove
Shrapnel into rain

If vengeance vanquished 
From the cursed lips of weak men
An idea never taking root

If every tank vanished
If by chance a miracle
Peace reclaims the land

If laughter broke out
Like wars fought with satire’s
Pugilist punning 

What room would there be
For anger what bitter root
Not allowed to stretch

Its tentacles 
Through the hearts of men hardened
By indifference 

What will we bequeath 
Our children if not a world
Evermore human

Easy as an exquisite corpse paraphrased 
as dictionaried as a pontificator

raised by the thump of the 146 bus— 
these 16 are for you. Shout out

to the city warblers yelling in slanted 
syllables on avenues porous

with ill-built adornments & horse-riding 
monuments. These 16 are for you:

linebreakers & trash talkers, polysyllabic 
halfsteppers ready to mom’s spaghetti

their one opportunity. Meanwhile, 
the rooftop across from us undercuts

the sunsetted skyline & is topped with 
two metric heretics dressed

like crows. Another bullheaded poet 
ina Bulls hat rests his elbows

on the bench back & wonders if 
it is his hoarse verse or the verbed

streetlights making ellipsis from 
the veritable trees & inevitable breezes. 

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.

Worried my love’s not worth much, but I always
come when called. Ain’t my name your favorite
command? No need to raise your hand. How 
long you plan on marauding me with meak 
mercies: I’m still bandaged from your last love:
dogged years I’ve knelt at your lap: tongue out,
eyes wet and for what: when it’s not your hands
on me, it’s your dead come ready to wind up 
and wound.

As a child I made things 
out of clay—a pig who

could not be eaten, a mule  
who refused to carry

anything other than a pig 
who could not be eaten.

They were companion 
pieces. They kept each

other company, and me. 
We kept each other’s

secrets: what flesh can 
do with clay, what clay

can do that flesh can’t. 
I was a small child who made

small decisions. I made big  
people angry. I made them

confused. I 
refuse, I refuse.

We met ourselves as we came back 
As we hiked the trail from the north. 
Our foot-prints mixed in the rainy path
Coming back and going forth. 
The prints of my comrade’s hob-nailed shoes 
And my tramp shoes mixed in the rain. 
We had climbed for days and days to the North 
And this was the sum of our gain: 
We met ourselves as we came back,
And were happy in mist and rain. 
Our old souls and our new souls 
Met to salute and explain—
That a day shall be as a thousand years, 
And a thousand years as a day. 
The powers of a thousand dreaming skies 
As we shouted along the trail of surprise 
Were gathered in our play: 
The purple skies of the South and the North, 
The crimson skies of the South and the North,
Of tomorrow and yesterday.

^{—after Freda Epum}

the day could do without
me. The ice outside glitters around
my car’s tires like a pageant
dress. Only digital utterances between
myself and the world for at least
a week. The last time he visited, my friend
noted the lack of natural light
in my downstairs apartment, 
the posthumous-grey bleeding into
the mood. Aught of light
in the bedroom due to the blackout
curtains. But sometimes,
the day heckles, with its high-
bitch sun and melting snow. Some
days, I lay in the morgue
of darkness, hyper-alone,
and the sunlight, so audacious, paints
the color back onto my cheeks. 

^{translated from the Navajo by Washington Matthews} 

Where my kindred dwell, there I wander.
Child of the White Corn am I, there I wander.
At the Red Rock House, there I wander.
Where the dark kethawns are at the doorway, there I wander.
With the pollen of dawn upon my trail, there I wander.
At the yuni the striped cotton hangs with pollen. There I wander.
Going around with it, there I wander.
Taking another, I depart with it. With it I wander. 
In the house of long life, there I wander.
In the house of happiness, there I wander.
Beauty before me, with it I wander.
Beauty behind me, with it I wander.
Beauty below me, with it I wander.
Beauty above me, with it I wander.
Beauty all around me, with it I wander.
In old age traveling, with it I wander.
On the beautiful trail I am, with it I wander.

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. 

sees my mother seated up in bed, unable to move 

of her own accord, lips parched from medication, 

she begins to sing, a chant, an Arab song, 

from her childhood, eyes almost transparent.  

My two aunts, or they would have been my aunts, 

who died in infancy . . . from pneumonia? . . .

scarlet fever? . . .  no one alive now knows. 

What was, when my mother was a child, in the air

of the world’s most industrialized city? Blessings 

and horrors, raw orange sunsets, that blue flame 

burning is industry, the smell of incense rising 

in the fabulous churches, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Aramaic 

liturgies, descendants of inventors of alphabets. 

After midnight humid and hot. The dead are wherever 

we are. They’re not just details, these tears of bliss. 

Survival’s what’s involved. Furious, the fate

that keeps watch. Everything’s something else and yet itself

at the same time. Home, you know? Everyone 

and everything is related. Wet steel-blue morning, thin, 

purple salvias near the backyard fence. Your Grandpa’s 

dead, I, the baby, must have heard it said.  

The family I’m staying with,  
because my father is working,  
have called their dog Darkness,  
and it is a beautiful name.  
I’ve decided to camp.  
And out here in an old tent  
on the edges of their property,  
Darkness encircles me.  
I burrow my back into the field,  
strangely soft with a grass I don’t  
know the name of. I should know  
the names of grasses, and of trees,  
and of so many things.  
                                    Soon, the thick  
wind loosens into coolness and the light  
begins to dim. As I look up into Darkness,  
the underside of her tongue is spotty  
with inky-on-pink constellations.  

Her body makes me think of my own body,  
my fingertips dry as match heads 
that will light this nameless grass if I’m  
not careful. 
                  Darkness is a good teacher,  
and she guides me to be gentle with myself.  
With a nuzzle of her head into my hand,  
she says, in her way, that I am ok.  
I stroke her so long that the heavy night  
settles, and all that is left is the white blaze  
on her chest. 
          Soon, my eyes, and I, will adjust.  
But for now, I’m suspended,  
in this moment that is the sum  
of all moments.  
The grass, it occurs to me,  
is bluestem. The air is amniotic.  
And I cry a good cry as the great dog  
keeps on guarding me. 

^{Alliterate often equals anyone can stutter.
—Louis Zukofsky}

CLASSROOM

Backpack. Back to school. A bookworm. Late nights book-warmed. Tall tales. Tell-Tale Heart. Stone soup. Mike Fink. A pink eraser. Ser & estar. A star atop the page. A typed page. Cut & paste. Sometimes I’m slow paced. Trace a wave. Cursive. Cursor. Sine curve. Frogger goes kerplunk. We speak & spell. Read & write. I do a rewrite. Rhyme by rote. Hey Diddle Diddle. Digits double. In my textbook I doodle. Sketch pad. Scotch tape. Scratch & sniff. Pear-fect. Berry good. Grape going. Study group. I glue some goop. A great big gooey glob. We spin the globe. Hong Kong. Fiji. Cancún. New York, New York. Blue ink. Half inch. Fluid ounce. I ace the exam for once. Pop quiz. Pop fizz. Scissors. Seat sore. Stegosaurus. From my seat paper planes soared. Chalkboard. I’m stark bored. The chalk broke. Pop Rocks. Pop cans. I can’t. You can. Pop-top. Twist the tab & crush. Orange Crush. Secret crush. Love letter. Origami amore. Already going steady. Valentine-vexed. Doodle-doted. Dimple-dappled. You’re dumped. Humpty Dumpty. We play pin the tail on the donkey. Mountain Dew. Scooby Doo. Dewey Decimals. Dutifully I return The Snowy Day by the due date. Dried dates. Damp day. Windowsill. Pencil. Pen swell. Pen pals. Pentagons. Going, gone. The bus is gone. Let go. Lego. Logo turtle. Or. Are. Oreo. Oregon Trail. Homework. Homeward. Sidewalk. The sign says walk. All week.

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Trippers and askers surround me, 
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation, 
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies,  authors old and new, 
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, 
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, 
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events; 
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself. 

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, 
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, 
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, 
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, 
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. 

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders, 
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait. 

I read on my iPhone, stopped at a red light, & next to my car   
a child is playing a street piano fast, counting THREE, TWO, ONE,  
yelling over traffic, I’m PLAYING, sun on the child’s face  

& fingers skittering on keys— 
neurons direct these fingers, a consciousness no one shares  
that says, high notes now, then low, & laughter, 

& an adult urges the child to  come-on-let’s-go,  
but the child plays a crescendo & says  
I AM FINISHING MY SONG— 

& artificial intelligence can use recurrent neural networks to create  
piano music & AI can drive cars, but my eyes tire, 
my eyes are animal eyes with animal need to gaze out 

at red lights & be given the useless-lovely data of a sparrow skimming 
to a telephone wire, a child at a rainbow-painted stringed instrument,  
the sparrow hopping on a wire, the child pressing keys like a question:  

low, high? Low, high? Perception a note not played again, 
& when the light turns green my car drives, 
I am finishing my song. The light is yellow now.

I am a child  
of wonder again and 
rain tells me to watch 
for snails and slugs. 

I gather dirt, sand, and sticks 
for the terrarium 
where I make a safe home 
away from footsteps, fast cars, and ditch water.

I don’t want them to die  
so I make them  
a space for living. 

I ask my ma to buy lettuce 
because in the book I got from the library 
I learned they will eat lettuce.

I am  
greedy to learn  
what keeps everything alive.

Their spiral shapes leave shiny trails behind. 
I imagine I am a snail leaving  
magic everywhere I go.

As if weightlessness were aspirational―
what nonsense―

                                  your death,

        a stone 

I can only hope to shoulder forever. Imagine
it gets better―

                                  what nothing

        am I left with

then? Even despair carries a particular
charge: that fantastic

                                  last whiff of lavender

      detergent

imprinted on the collar of a holiday sweater―

                                    mama,

the mourners are assembling. March me 
up that hill …

            and i return to the field
that i never leave          other boys 
are here too          stamping the bruise-dark grass
one of us stands alone     between posts
and waits for the rest       to rifle
a ball through the dark      and toward the net
he defends               security lights
from the school     on the embankment 
above us     cast angles and shadows      that cut 
through our bodies
and abstract them          all i have learned
up till now     is fear 
                                     of opaque windows 
in houses outside the fence          of headlights
to lone cars that pass     leaving a wake
of deeper dark          of the neighbor nightwalking
his brindled, snarl-jawed dog          of other boys     
laughing and taunting     before their volleys     
bullet     toward and beyond the boy guarding the net          
of myself    how i understand no choice
but to join them
                             then     i am called     
to stand between the posts    
and what else can I do
                                      when i am there     
other boys strike     the one ball
shared between us     and it sidewinds      
out of the dark     hurtling above or around or 
sometimes straight at me     
                                           and what else 
can i do     crouched in my place 
and ready to throw my body     
after the ball      as it rips out of the night
but raise my own laughter    against them
the boys     arrayed 20 yards away     and aiming 
for my failure     but ring out with a taunting 
glee of my own     
                          until i call another boy 
to his turn     and walk back to the edge 
of the group     and wait to stand over the ball
and hope     to make the new boy     
lay down his body    for our game     as i 
have laid down mine          
                                    and      at the end of it     
what else can i do     but return the shoves 
of other boys     as we send each other 
away     in a gesture we refuse to name      as love
and slip through      the fence gap 
where we first snuck in      and leave 
the field i can never leave     and     all my fear intact     
be gone

I am a knotted nebula— 
a whirling flame 
Shrieking afire the endless darkness ... 
I am the eternal center of gravity 
and about me swing the crazy moons— 
I am the thunder of rising suns, 
the blaze of the zenith— 
... the tremble of women’s bodies 
in the arms of lovers ... 
I sit on top of the Pole 
Drunk with starry splendor 
Shouting hozzanas at the Pleiades 
... booting footballs at the moon— 
I shall outlast the sun 
and the moon 
and the stars.… 

^{Prince tour, Public Hall, November 21, 1982}

By the time I got here, the album
            was already history. 1999 dropped in 1982, 
when I worried about what I’d do with my life

after high school, and as I fretted over 
            how my hair looked on mornings 
before I left for school; though, sadly,

my worries were not in that order. 
            But when I faced the end of the century, 
I realized I knew little more then than I did when I sang

along with Prince at the Coliseum in Cleveland.
            On that night, I didn’t know a concert could be history. 
Me, just living in a moment of not recalling any moment

before this one, which must be what joy
            was, but what did I know? No one understood 
what a new century would look like,

and I didn’t gather that I’d lose loved
            ones, soon after the pages of the calendar tore away.
Back then, I didn’t understand what I’d be

if Prince had not been. Now, years later, 
            “life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last.”
His lyrics weigh on me, as I grow older and ill,

and years later I’ll barely remember this moment 
            of simply remembering, just another day called today.
But this time, even now, I know more:

I know, for instance, even as I hum a tune 
            and bring forth memories of that night, 
I’ve already become a point in history

before I even finish this song.

^{The Crisis Magazine, June 1967}

On the cover, Negro men playing checkers
in the park. Some wear hats, while others wear
waves in their hair. Either way, they’re all clean
and their strategy brims as sharp as their 
suits. Within these pages, they’re playing chess,

protecting future children, as they wear
ties, dress shirts, shined shoes—looking clean
and ready for business or for battle. And their
plan? No longer will textbooks be used as chess
pieces to keep Negro children in check.

Sound familiar? Schools will be pushed to clean
bookshelves of the white-washed lessons of their
past. The NAACP opens minds like games of chess,
and all excuses for hiding a country’s checkered
past will be dismissed. Despite segregation’s wear

and tear from school boards, and the fear of their
white parents, henchmen, bullies—all just chess
pieces, really, but jumping laws like checkers
when life is more complex—books remain where
the mind cannot hide. Either you come clean

and admit your ignorance, or be a pawn on the chess
board of intellect, banning books. They think check-
mate! But when I see Crisis in a library archive where
we still argue to be seen, I lose patience. Kleenex,
please, for Karens clutching their pearls! I pray their

white kids are reading Langston Hughes in a public library: √.
But one state over, bookshelves have no Black authors, cleaned
out. Our books remain under attack, Kings in a game of chess.

must look so small, undetectable even,
from the vantage point where I imagine 

a god could see me, and I do sometimes  
imagine a god like a sentient star

out beyond where our instruments 
could find it, then I talk myself 

out of the image. Out of the concept
entirely. From a distance, I know 

I’m an ant tunneling my way 
through sand between plastic panels, 

watched—or not—from outside. 
My puny movements on this planet, 

all the things I’ve done or built 
with my own body or mind, seem 

like nothing at all. But from the inside 
this life feels enormous, unlimited 

by the self—by selfness—
vaster even than the sparkling 

dark it can’t be seen from.

^{—after William Wordsworth}

The world is too much with us. Late and soon
it’s morning, phone in hand, and a screen on my wrist powers
on to report the no rest I had. News, a tragedy—so easily ours—
already breaking as I crack my eggs. Rage and prayers, rage and prayers, a boon
for the tycoon’s fear-campaign, clicks for the zillionaire buying up the moon.
Ad, ad, an AI figment, someone squawking, someone hawking—hours
consumed, of this only life, and who is left in the garden, who is tending the flowers?
I am trying to hear the birdsong through the auto-tune
of all this ubiquitous engineered crooning, but a podcast informs me silence will be
extinct by the weekend, gone like thought and the good kind of alone. Peace is outworn;
it’s chaos that feeds the algorithm, no likes for the actual, the tangible. No lea
without a billboard promising Hell as if it isn’t here. But don’t be forlorn, 
I’m sold—the world is yours! (after this ad) unending and enhanced on a screen. Don’t mind the sea
at the door. Time for a selfie, suggests my phone. A filter. I can add (for free!) horns.

Twenty-five summers ago
I wrote a poem about the summer ending,
the shadows lengthening, and the light
gone soft and elegiac
like the end of a love song.
It joined roughly a million poems
written that summer alone
on the same subject, but in Spanish
or Japanese, or Swahili,
always the same thing, same shadows
lengthening, same soft light,
and I ended my poem, twenty five years ago,
by saying that the back of my hand
had begun to look like a dead leaf
or the back of someone else’s hand.
And this is just a shout out to say
to that version of me, a quarter
century ago, that the hand in question
looks even more like a dead leaf, even more 
like the back of someone else’s hand,
but—and this is crucial, the importance
of this next observation cannot
be overstated—the strange old hand
is still here, still enduring, still writing itself
into itself.

^{for P.C.}

My friend grieves while we search 
for an authentic experience, like tacos 
in hand-made corn tortillas. On Zarzamora, 
Letitia’s is busy, so it must be good and real. 
Early April—Lent specials in cursive 
on posters outside. We park near
an unexpected cluster of purple flowers, 
short and wild like a sudden storm. 
We kneel. I think of Anthony of Padua, 
the patron saint of lost things. Both of us 
draw closer. The flowers speak to us. They say—
existence and persistence are the same thing. 
              A brisk spring wind brings sweet 
              peppers and onions, oil and fish.