Once in a dream (for once I dreamed of you)
    We stood together in an open field;
    Above our heads two swift-winged pigeons wheeled, 
Sporting at east and courting full in view:—
When loftier still a broadening darkness flew, 
    Down-swooping, and a ravenous hawk revealed;
    Too weak to fight, too fond to fly, they yield;
So farewell life and love and pleasures new. 
Then as their plumes fell fluttering to the ground, 
    Their snow-white plumage flecked with crimson drops, 
        I wept, and thought I turned towards you to weep:
    But you were gone; while rustling hedgerow tops 
Bent in a wind which bore to me a sound
        Of far-off piteous bleat of lambs and sheep. 

Over the past two weeks, please list the items you have lost.

At the present moment, do you know the location & number of your teeth?

(in grams) Please estimate the weight of each of the following: Left lung, half-liver, three fingers on your right hand.

(in miles) Please estimate the distance from the back of your skull to the skin of your eye.

Over the past two weeks, please estimate the number of times you’ve attempted to start a conversation and failed (including, but not limited to: grocery stores, living rooms, when you are alone.)

(in incandescence) How much light passes through you? Is it enough to write a letter?

Pick a letter. Pick a new name.

Can you hear the woman singing?

What was your death’s taxonomy? Where is its kingdom & domain?

How important do you feel to others?

Are you sitting atop the creaking hinges of something only you can see?

Are you certain there is no part of your body that is missing.

Are you certain there is nothing missing at all.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
   That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

Immediately after the diagnosis, we flip through the racks.

Each of us yearns for a sweater or spoons—a reason to stay—a bargain—a bet.

Ma and I search different sections of the store for something—then each other.

Her—in lamps. Me—in clothes. Striking wires—

The clacking hangers clapping one after another—bursting at the joints 

mimicking the sounds of knobs turning,

or window panes breaking in slow motion, the air knocked out of them, too.

I stack clearance candles in our cart.

Ma checks out bathroom rugs and kitchen towels.

These days we build separate homes from red tag items.

I miss Ma the most between the Kitchen and Women’s Clothing departments.

Unraveled by the operation of how 

one builds a house from the inside.

A second diagnosis that day: I won’t ever come back here alone after she’s gone.

Isn’t shopping a series of searching?

On the best days, everything is a grab—a steal—cancer and—my mother from me.

My hope is that every space with four walls—that every day of treatment 

will be a door out—will be sunlight in bags—despite discount—let it be—big—

all the time we buy back. 

since feeling is first
who pays any attention 
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate 
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

You are not she I loved. You cannot be
           My wild, white dove, 
My tempest-driven dove that I gave house, 
           You cannot be my Love. 

She died. I used to hold her all night long; 
           Come awake
At dawn beside her. Try to ease with loving 
            A thirst too deep to slake. 

O, it was pain to keep her shut against me. 
           Honey and bitterness
To taste her with sharp kisses and hold her after
            In brief duress. 

You cold woman, you stranger with her ways, 
         Smiling cruelly, 
You tear my heart as never her wild wings’
                   beating 
                            Wounded me. 

When Love becomes a stranger
In the temple he has built
Of remembered nights and days,
When he sighs and turns away
From the altar in the temple
With unreturning feet,
When the candles flicker out
And the magical-sweet incense
Vanishes . . .
Do you think there is grief born
In any god's heart?

a walk in a midwinter ochre wood
to get some england sun
as it steals away—
a little poodle runs to show you love;
you like the feel of the animal’s body
on your leg; it’s something
of an acceptance so you smile
and are not the least bothered; you even hope
it’ll jump, though the lady yells
no jumping Sam! no jumping!
and when she adds ‘you know he
just loves EVERYbody!’ why should you
suddenly feel tears coming?—
it’s just that EVERYbody; how do you
explain this? there’s nobody to explain
it to: why she needed to take away
from you this one feeling of special?
how could she know it was the most
human moment of your day—
the most human moment in weeks?

Who knows the secrets in my gaze?
What holds me back when I might choke?
Who sees beyond my taut hellos
To see the grief etched on my face?
Nobody knows what lurks within;
Nobody brings me back again.
Who needs to disappear for a while?
Who sings my name beyond the veil?
Who has my memories, my tales?
Who’s lurking in my carpet’s dust?
Nobody feels this weight beneath my skin.
Who knows I’m grieving as I walk?
Who has the list of gravity’s costs?
Nobody but the man I’ve lost.

I have a red onion in a green bowl on my kitchen counter
sprouting a green stalk that began as a little green haystack

bump, a knobby cyst, really, that broke surface, felt like what
I imagine I’m feeling for when I rub my breasts in the shower,

my eyes closed as if water is a blindfold allowing me to feel
within that dark any small homicide growing within me. I can’t

bring myself to use the onion, to gnash its skin, to whack off
its hard-on-gooseneck like I’m suddenly death’s

scythe, death’s brindled pet, death’s dappled good-girl. Maybe,
the onion believes in something, imagines itself still wild,

or holds in its layers the delusion of lilacs or iris or
goldenrod or blueberry or some other rambling growth

redacting my sense of abandon, here, in this too-large house,
a-lone-ly, not like a battle with silence way-of-alone-ness but

a passage. Quiet. Sometimes bright, sometimes dim, so, foreign. 
I am a theft waiting to happen, a rotten spell visioning

the onion’s end. Salt. Oil. Softly seared particulate
endings. Oh, onion, circular cycle, joy-halo. Grow.

Through my
little window, I
see one day
the entire bird, 
the next just 
a leeward wing, 
the next
only a painful
call, which, without
the body, makes
beautiful attachments
by even
attaching at
all.

with all my friends     & sometimes still am     
even though you can’t say that out loud 
except in a karaoke song     at a dive bar on the LES

I hate to swim but love the ocean   
all that artificial       blue for miles    
I miss my mother (who isn’t dead) & always will       

her illegible cursive on my refrigerator door  
when we go shopping       she sits in the fitting room 
while I try on bras & dresses for a wedding

I’m thirty-four & live alone     I don’t know 
the number of any doctor       who will I call in a winter 
without her     I will never pick up the phone

The worst part of it is that I’ve forgotten your face. Or the idea that each tide was a slender finger pulling at these knots, loose end then left to work on another day. Lost at sea, love is a logogram: less than, fewer still, a word made nothing more than cauter-mark on starboard hard, port I left all those years ago. Sometimes, I dream of my own (sorry, our own) great-rooted bed, shaped from something still alive. Eurycleia means “broad fame” and that’s a sandy-pit, if you ask me. It’s an island beautiful as a scarred oxen’s back, sowed with lash and eyes. I saw something of you the other day in this glass of magic, vase filled with smoke’s children. There’s that dress you wore, I said to no one in particular. There’s that blue that never bled to red wine, dark in its never-nocked-arrow waves. And suddenly you’re the moon, again, lost in reflection’s sea. I follow the light to nowhere as I wander through the sipped sleeve. Because. Because you walked the stairs that night before I left, after we heard the rain spill like grain from a split sack. You walked in front of me, just above the cochineal stars, bright bald ember, fashioned still spear. I think of nothing else but you. It’s true. It’s the worst part of forgetting, all this remembering.

All that night I walked alone and wept.
I tore a rose and dropped it on the ground.
My heart was lead; all that night I kept
Listening to hear a dreadful sound.

A tree bent down and dew dripped from its hair.
The earth was warm; dawn came solemnly.
I stretched full-length upon the grass and there
I said your name but silence answered me.

^{(To F. S.)}

I loved my friend. 
He went away from me. 
There’s nothing more to say. 
The poem ends, 
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend. 

Everyone who left us we find everywhere.
It’s easier, now, to look them in the eyes—
At gravesites, in bed, when the phone rings.
Of course, we wonder if they think of us.

It’s easier, now, to look them in the eyes,
Imagine touching a hand, listening to them talk.
Of course, we wonder if they think of us
When nights, like tonight, turn salty, warm.

Imagine touching a hand, listening to them talk—
Hard to believe they’re capable of such coldness.
When nights, like tonight, turn salty, warm,
We think of calling them, leaving messages.

Hard to believe they’re capable of such coldness—
No color, no pulse, not even a nerve reaction.
We think of calling them, leaving messages
Vivid with news we’re sure they’d want to know.

No color, no pulse, not even a nerve reaction:
We close our eyes in order not to see them.
Vivid with news, we’re sure they’d want to know
We don’t blame them, really. They weren’t cruel.

We close our eyes in order not to see them
Reading, making love, or falling asleep.
We don’t blame them. Really, they weren’t cruel,
Though it hurts every time we think of them:

Reading, making love, or falling asleep,
Enjoying the usual pleasures and boredoms.
Though it hurts every time we think of them,
Like a taste we can’t swallow their names stay.

Enjoying the usual pleasures and boredoms,
Then, they leave us the look of their faces
Like a taste we can’t swallow. Their names stay,
Diminishing our own, getting in the way

At gravesites, in bed, when the phone rings.
Everyone who left us we find everywhere,
Then they leave us, the look of their faces
Diminishing, our own getting in the way.

Yesterday we walked apart, 
Separate and cold and mortal. 
Now the mystic kiss has joined us, 
Now we stand inside the portal

That permits of no returning,
And my heart is strangely burning. 

I know not what the word may be, 
Or what the charm, or what the token, 
That has filled us with this glory. 
But never let the charm be broken. 

Let it stay a mystery
For all time to be. 

Yesterday, with lighter joys,
We wantoned at the outer portal. 
Now, with love’s old alchemy, 
We have made ourselves immortal. 

Odd how you entered my house quietly,
Quietly left again.
While you stayed you ate at my table,
Slept in my bed.
There was much sweetness,
Yet little was done, little said.
After you left there was pain,
Now there is no more pain.

But the door of a certain room in my house
Will be always shut.
Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from,
The music you played,
Are in that room
With the pillow where last your head was laid.
And there is one place in my garden
Where it’s best that I set no foot.

So we, who've supped the self-same cup,
    To-night must lay our friendship by;
Your wrath has burned your judgment up,
    Hot breath has blown the ashes high.
You say that you are wronged— ah, well,
    I count that friendship poor, at best
A bauble, a mere bagatelle,
    That cannot stand so slight a test.

I fain would still have been your friend,
    And talked and laughed and loved with you;
But since it must, why, let it end;
    The false but dies, 't is not the true.
So we are favored, you and I,
    Who only want the living truth.
It was not good to nurse the lie;
    'Tis well it died in harmless youth.

I go from you to-night to sleep.
    Why, what's the odds? why should I grieve?
I have no fund of tears to weep
    For happenings that undeceive.
The days shall come, the days shall go
    Just as they came and went before.
The sun shall shine, the streams shall flow
    Though you and I are friends no more.

And in the volume of my years,
    Where all my thoughts and acts shall be,
The page whereon your name appears
    Shall be forever sealed to me.
Not that I hate you over-much,
    'Tis less of hate than love defied;
Howe'er, our hands no more shall touch,
    We'll go our ways, the world is wide.

^{for Maria}

Sitting across the table from you

I think back to when our friendship

came down from the mountains.

It was a cold day and the miners

had not left for work.

You break a cookie in half like bread

and this sharing is what we both now need.

That which breaks into crumbs are memories.

Your gray hair cut short and you ask if I notice.

How can I tell you that Bolivia will always be

beautiful and everything I notice is you

and yes is you. Our napkins folded in our hands.

Folded as if our meeting now is prayer.

Did I ever tell you that your eyes are a map

and I would lose myself if you ever turned away

If I had one more day
I would write a love poem
composed of one word
repeated like binary code.

I’ll multiply it by the number
of days that passed 
without saying it to you
and I’ll add the days

when I said it with no words
because I want to say it 
more. And like a bee 
gathering pollen, I’ll collect 

everything ever said 
in one word like a square root
multiplied by the power of ten.
I’ll count even that day

when my anger at you
or for you turned me into 
a stone, and also the days 
when I was away

sending my songs like 
postcards to the lonely,
feeling you in every touch 
of love I gave to the world.

I’ll count all my days,
even the nine months of days 
before I was born, to say  
this exponential, growing “I love you.”

You ask me for a poem about love 
in place of a wedding present, trying to save me 
money.  For three nights I’ve lain 
under glow-in-the-dark stars I’ve stuck to the ceiling 
over my bed.  I’ve listened to the songs 
of the galaxy.  Well, Carmen, I would rather 
give you your third set of steak knives 
than tell you what I know.  Let me find you 
some other, store-bought present.  Don’t  
make me warn you of stars, how they see us 
from that distance as miniature and breakable 
from the bride who tops the wedding cake 
to the Mary on Pinto dashboards 
holding her ripe, red heart in her hands.     

When your joys are of the sweetest
    And your heart is light and free; 
When your griefs are skimming fleetest, 
    Love, one moment think of me. 

I’d not ask you to remember 
    Me when life is dull and drear;
When your hopes are but an ember
    From a cold and vanished year; 

Sorrow’s far too bleak a burden
    To retain in mem’ry’s hall. 
Friendship has no greater guerdon
    Than to happiness recall. 

So, when roses scent the twilight
    Air with ling’ring dew damp breath, 
Please remember me as eye-bright
    Faith remembers until death.