ALL
THIS ORDINARY
I
see pine flies, parasites
search among the three-strawed needles
of Jack Pines, potter wasps
fashioning vessels in the
hand-thrown
concrete of the curtain wall.
I
began to think evening was greying
to nonexistence when the deck
light
started up from a last ray and then
the whole
prow of the inboard, the issues of
the West
which retire, and the East which
arise,
then the hocused beginnings hyped
by light,
then by shadow.
I
see the four horse-stars in the great
square of Pegasus
just after scorch streaks
as the west visits the infirmary
below the waves.
The
miracle of all this ordinary is like my first day
in California, everyone entitled to oranges.
DESPERATE
CONDITIONS
At
extremes, like living in the Arctic,
building long-lasting houses with breath,
one may eventually have to fight with one’s body
and strangers will watch.
When she
reached the hospital she was already
disappearing. Much of her face had unpacked,
but the weight and memories remained in Alabama.
New food
would not become her.
She could
seldom be found in the room wearing
her name. There was another woman there
who looked like her but did not know those
claiming to know her,
the ones who came each time her lights went flat.
Finally no
one could remake her
from what she’d cried into her sheets,
and her family didn’t return to see
whoever it was she looked like the night she gave up
and entered the icy green trailing of the dials.
FULL OF
BEGINNINGS
I am full
of beginnings, the best parts
since endings so often go awry.
This is
philosophy, the thrill of starts
and where they go.
For
instance as much as I touch Frances,
it is not enough. Like white mice
pressing their pleasure centers, I am writing
in the shadow of my hand
and the dream I keep beginning
has the fractals of snowflakes
catching on everything, the whole thing slowing
so we have time to tell nervous stories
at night when the hot logs talk among themselves.
Not once
upon, but Monday, when sunlight
through water on hydrilla is the
Northern Lights
airing its curtains and everything beginning
hovers expectantly above.