1
And daybreak! The sun
sitting up—
Oh God
I thought I saw God spread out
in the roses again—
Momentarily,
I will be taken up
like flame in a cloud like a cinder in fire
to outflap the empyrean—
Dead things gumming the sidewalk.
Hello,
dead things.
Tell me: What good is a life that wears away?
2
I chew the red wire,
then the blue wire.
Then through the flowered wallpaper—
Oh! Look at this charming table:
already set; built for a mouse;
and silent as a banquet hall
after the guests have gone.
3
I was a dead thing once.
On the back porch once—
facing the square
of my mother’s rose-
garden, with the northfacing windows
full-opened in June, and other flowers,
the names I’ve forgotten, all gone
into bloom,
I’ve heard the train horn bawl out again
from across the river, first sound
I remember, tolled
thru the walls of an empty house,
have watched the coyotes come loping
over across these frost-flocked rows of the field—
4
‘Quick—to the window, Mother
come see—the coyote
he’s dragging a haunch by the bone.’
He’ll lay it down, lie down
beside it, then sink
his teeth in the flitch.
5
The dream is big, the dream is fancy:
The dream is big and fancy.
The rodent: cuddly; but a little dirty.
I’ll keep him as a pet, I’ll pet him like
a luck-charm—
6
Remember summer, Jordan?
Eating quinces, spitting the seeds?
And how you never ate quinces again
when they laughed when you called them quinces?
And now there are no more quinces?
I do remember quinces.
7
Beautiful ones—I see you everywhere.
Hiding inside yourselves
8
Sometimes time is iron. Swing it hard
hear it whoosh.
9
At the door, the red curtain is still flapping.
Who will go in?
The one who is going
is going.
No, I do not die here.
The year is wrong.
Earth returns
and today no cloud cover.
I wish my heart was as big as the world,
but bigger—
10
The sun sitting up
ever so slowly—