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She’s not the same, her body more naked in its aging, its disorder.

Two animals, doe-eyed, slick across the road into the femur of the night.

It is a city of sea, sun, boulevards, strolling beauties, life-altering food.

Today is my favorite kind of day. Night opens, light concedes.

If I had known I would have saved the abacus from the fire.

Doctor Dressler left her a note: Suicide. Back by 7:00. Love, Max.

Children, this is what a bad dream looks like, our teacher said.

I sometimes have to laugh because even now, as a middle-aged man.

I arrange your five deflating basketballs under the lonely net.

Dance with you? I said after a moment. That’s your dare?

She had come to the scene where she needed to get them in bed.

We are each other’s as surely as song stitches breath to air.

Poets need to be
in constant touch with the extremes of feeling.

& I said let there be dark pouring from your mouth at daybreak

My dear, even my ear is trying to eat itself in its attempt to forget you.

He was reading Our Town. She studied the departure board.

Later in the pale of dawn your hair brushed across my forearm.

I cradled the lifeless bird in my hand and marveled at its beauty.

Put out to pasture, flop down into clover, alternate to the glue factory.

I broke up fights, bandaged cuts, fielded calls from parents, and sat with the sad or depressed.

I remember a field too long as the stem of a pear chosen in Upstate.

I don’t need to consult a healer to feel the aura glowing around us.

In the garden this morning, I thought for a moment I saw T’ao Ch’ien.

The sedan clipped their front bumper and pitched Bill’s car into a slide.

Mom often went to work on her days off. The library was her refuge.

Owen falls. Like a dummy. Like he’s dead even before he dies.

I don’t remember being born, only the great dog whose fur I clung to.

The fog’s sheen is a mirror: my mother sees the terrain of the future—