for Charlotte

burning tree above me
it lives by fire
and its leaves are not consumed.
The car is cool though,
green as the leaves
and cool gentle breeze
walks through the window
open just a sliver
to let the world in.
Could this be now
the way a mountain is?
Or did it mean a fountain?
What fables words tell,
include you as you fall
down through them
bravely listening.

2.
This morning I do not want
the continuous, I want
pearls on an invisible string,
want footsteps, staircase,
Viennese. The steps
are horses’ hooves
and it is morning. Bells
annoy the hooded crows,
rooks, doves and shadows–
hard to see with all that music.

3.
Once there was a beginning
and twice an ending came.
Three times is the charm they say
so I’ll wait here she said
until all the ending starts again.
She lay on her lawn
prone to love the loping rabbits.

4.
See how strangely
truth comes to town,
in wet clothes
carrying a flame.
Call it a church
so don’t pay taxes,
make the whole harbor
holy water, wave
the Torah to make the wind blow,
make up truth as you go along—
it’s always there,
waiting to be made.
That’s what cities are for.

5.
Read Olson and Augustine
till you believe. Nothing
more accurate in all higher
mathematics than your street address,
o sacred numbers
change them at great risk.
Once they gave a new number
to my house so now I have
two places I call here.

6.
You’ll say I’m scraping the barrel
but the barrel is gone,
winey oak and old, it tumbled
over the falls with no one in it,
bobbing down the rapids,
I watched it till it met its mother
river water and was home.
All I have is what it left
faintly on my fingers,
I kick them and say more.

7.
Cantinflas was a comedian
remember him?
cunning awkwardness
was his sly trick in trade.
And why do I mention him now?
Why do you suppose?

8.
I don’t mean to sound snarky
but the leaves are very new
the clouds are few
it’s hard to be solemn as an overcoat
even though the day is chilly
and I have translated so much
and so long from the dim
Late Latin of my sleep.

9.
An oriole
heard yesterday
by woman
told me tell
love is a call
in the sky
hear, Now.
Right now.

10.
What are we as a people?
We stand in the doorway
making sure we have our keys
before we go out, pocket
after pocket we survey, ‘check’
we say but we have never
been there before, dark after dark
and still no keys? What to do?
Go back inside or leave forever?
Or just go out and leave unlocked
and hope the house will still be here
if we ever remember to come home.

11.
Because pockets are caverns in our now,
in the tenuous geology of our day,
which way we walk or rest,
what’s hidden in them now,
mini-flashlight, komboloía,
handkerchief. Wallet. Keys.
And all the dust of our travels
and something more–the memory
of our hands and what they’ve held,
it’s like a gospel to go in theorem
so many minders of your truth–
so keep one pocket empty always
and sometimes tuck your fingers
gently in to feel what is to come.

12.
So now it’s turned
continuous–can’t have that,
go back to those beads,
feel one then let it go,
take another, then another,
don’t let your consciousness
imagine some smart string
to sling them on, no,
one and one and two
is just another one again.

13.
A woman took pictures of women
but dreamed one night about a man.
He stood with his back to her
facing the sea. So she became the sea.

14.
That’s what I mean,
the answer embedded in the question.
The smell of food cooking
nourishes something in us
that the food can’t feed.

15.
We plan an expedition
for the day. We will go
and walk across the street
to see some blue new flowers
I have never seen but you
saw yesterday and showed
a picture of them on your phone.
Or have we seen enough already?

16.
That damned pale car
is parked again among
the trees a furlong off,
our trees I want to say
because trees mean to belong
only to those who see them,
climb them, talk to them,
gratefully accept their fruit.
Trust me, I have plausible
theories about everything.

17.
Disconnect! Liberate!
Let the next
be new.
The sun is brighter now
but the air no warmer.
Is this the same day as today?
Only if you insist.

18.
So there’s my Vienna
for you, my love,
steeples and kids whirling around,
waltzes and czardases and
who knows mazurkas,
soundless this morning
so as not to disturb you,
your face so beautiful
on the satin pillow. Vienna?
Athena? A beauty in you
that wakes me the whole world.

7 May 2021