His fisherman’s cap 
is gray as is the sea 
where he stares. He once 
saw a mermaid 

there     near
the shore tangled 
in kelp. She wanted him 
to not see her. She wasn’t 

a gift. He wasn’t. Yet 
he stared. Keeps returning 
to stare at the now
nothing he sees. Nothing 

as in not her.
He once said he loved 
her     sea life.
He’s captured     capturer.

Blame agony.  
Blame perpetual 
return to the kelp 
stuck to his feet     for 

the wind over 
ears     in canals.
She’s singing 
a water hymn  

not to him
but to the air.  
This is where 
he dissolves.  

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys, 
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul 
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple 
As false dawn. 
                        Outside the open window 
The morning air is all awash with angels. 

   Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses, 
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells 
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear 
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing; 

   Now they are flying in place, conveying 
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving 
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden 
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet 
That nobody seems to be there. 
                                                    The soul shrinks 

From all that it is about to remember, 
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day, 
And cries, 
               “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry, 
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam 
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.” 

   Yet, as the sun acknowledges 
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors, 
The soul descends once more in bitter love 
To accept the waking body, saying now 
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises, 
     “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows; 
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves; 
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone, 
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating 
Of dark habits, 
                           keeping their difficult balance.”

They’re not like peaches or squash.

Plumpness isn’t for them. They like

being lean, as if for the narrow

path. The beans themselves sit qui-

etly inside their green pods. In-

stinctively one picks with care, 

never tearing down the fine vine,

never noticing their crisp bod-

ies, or feeling their willingness for

the pot, for the fire.

I have thought sometimes that

something—I can’t name it—

watches as I walk the rows, accept-

ing the gift of their lives to assist

mine.

I know what you think: this is fool-

ishness. They’re only vegetables.

Even the blossoms with which they

begin are small and pale, hardly sig-

nificant Our hands, or minds, our

feet hold more intelligence. With

this I have no quarrel. 

But, what about virtue?

I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,

Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,

Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.

And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,

And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,

And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn.

No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday’s disasters,

Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday’s pains.

Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey.

And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold summer nights.

And yes, I have refought those unfinished encounters.

      Still, they remain unfinished.

And yes, I have at times wished myself something different.

The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet;

The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity. 

          He stole forsythia.
He lived for love.
          He never got caught.

          A young mother on a motor scooter stopped at a traffic light, her little son perched 
on the ledge between her legs; she in a gleaming helmet, he in a replica of it, smaller, but 
the same color and just as shiny.  His visor is swung shut, hers is open.
          As I pull up beside them on my bike, the mother is leaning over to embrace the child, 
whispering something in his ear, and I’m shaken, truly shaken, by the wish, the need, to 
have those slim strong arms contain me in their sanctuary of affection.   
          Though they call this regression, though that implies a going back to some other 
state and this has never left me, this fundamental pang of being too soon torn from a bliss 
that promises more bliss, no matter that the scooter’s fenders are dented, nor that as it 
idles it pops, clears its throat, growls.

A second crop of hay lies cut   
and turned. Five gleaming crows   
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,   
and like midwives and undertakers   
possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,   
parting before me like the Red Sea.   
The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned   
to water-ski. They have, or they haven’t.   
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone   
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,   
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.   
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod   
brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;   
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.

*

The cicada’s dry monotony breaks   
over me. The days are bright   
and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today   
for an hour, with my whole   
body, the way babies cry?

*

A white, indifferent morning sky,   
and a crow, hectoring from its nest   
high in the hemlock, a nest as big   
as a laundry basket....
                                    In my childhood   
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,   
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.

The damp dirt road gave off   
this same complex organic scent.

I had the new books—words, numbers,   
and operations with numbers I did not   
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled   
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.

Spruce, inadequate, and alien   
I stood at the side of the road.   
It was the only life I had.