I shall gather myself into myself again,
   I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
Fusing them into a polished crystal ball
   Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
   Watching the future come and the present go,
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
   In restless self-importance to and fro.

            Dog lifts his leg to piss on the bull briar; pisses;
and up from the twists and thorns flies a ghost moth,
two of them, three, moving like an abandoned
but still persuasive, still shifting argument,
            until as usual they move how they move, even as
the field’s edge means the edge of the field, not
the shadow-stitched perimeter of childhood
            where someone’s explaining to me all over again
“A whip is not a lasso,” losing patience,
while someone else strikes a match, sets fire
                         to a box of maple leaves—desire—“No,
                         the leaves are what desire looks like, not how it feels.”