You saved me, you should remember me.

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.
Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,   
laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful,
something like that.

Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.
Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.
And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water;
perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.

Crucial
sounds or gestures like
a track laid down before the larger themes

and then unused, buried.

Islands in the distance. My mother   
holding out a plate of little cakes—

as far as I remember, changed
in no detail, the moment
vivid, intact, having never been
exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age   
hungry for life, utterly confident—

By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green   
pieced into the dark existing ground.

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time   
not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet   
it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

The shadow I cast when I stand  
in the sun has disappeared
beneath the trees, shadows
of crows over the roof
of the post office, or the field
of clover they fly above, throats
open, stitching the world
together with a fine thread,
doing the work of belonging.
Nothing is too trivial to love
enough to walk toward it,
your footsteps leaving 
badges on the earth, even
the nettles that chafe
your ankles worthy of love,
sparks of pain, like your
shadow, that prove
you’re alive.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

This is meant to be in praise of the interval called hangover, 
a sadness not co-terminous with hopelessness, 
and the North American doubling cascade 
that (keep going) “this diamond lake is a photo lab” 
and if predicates really do propel the plot 
then you might see Jerusalem in a soap bubble 
or the appliance failures on Olive Street 
across these great instances, 
because “the complex Italians versus the basic Italians” 
because what does a mirror look like (when it’s not working) 
but birds singing a full tone higher in the sunshine.

I’m going to call them Honest Eyes until I know if they are, 
in the interval called slam-clicker, Realm of Pacific, 
because the second language wouldn’t let me learn it 
because I have heard of you for a long time occasionally 
because diet cards may be the recovery evergreen 
and there is a new benzodiazepene called Distance,

anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

I suppose a broken window is not symbolic 
unless symbolic means broken, which I think it sorta does, 
and when the phone jangles 
what’s more radical, the snow or the tires, 
and what does the Bible say about metal fatigue 
and why do mothers carry big scratched-up sunglasses 
in their purses.

Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice 
because we are running out. 
Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced. 
Hello to the nonfunctional sprig of parsley 
and the game of finding meaning in coincidence.

Because there is a second mind in the margins of the used book 
because Judas Priest (source: Firestone Library) 
sang a song called Stained Class, 
because this world is 66% Then and 33% Now,

and if you wake up thinking “feeling is a skill now” 
or “even this glass of water seems complicated now” 
and a phrase from a men’s magazine (like single-district cognac) 
rings and rings in your neck, 
then let the consequent misunderstandings 
(let the changer love the changed) 
wobble on heartbreakingly nu legs 
into this street-legal nonfiction, 
into this good world, 
this warm place 
that I love with all my heart,

anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.