the camellia & the rose greeted me;

the rose nodded, the camellia

waved from the sunlit side

of my own house, my right

side, my temple as it were, facing

east.

Maria, many years hence

now, a fawn walked in the woods,

and after the curve at the bridge,

a young buck, with a few years’

of growth on his antlers,

leaped in the lower brush,

and crossed the path,

and then crossed back

over again, and then leaped

upland in the direction

of the fawn.

(1918)

the distance between us is fixed

like the distance between port and port

as Genoa to New York.

i can imagine all i want

narrowing the span, an alteration —

of currents, wind-speed,

velocity, articulation

of vessel, but

the distance is set,

from the beginning of each

voyage

__                  ___

(4483 nautical miles

18.7 days at sea

10 knots —

this does not count the land

routes, the tear from the

house and the before, — ear

separation —

nor the journey inland again and again to home)

_______                 ________

mother-regard and what

it is set; father flight

& scan is set; we navigate

the same sea.

It all originated outside me

the lamps, the shades, the trees

and yet the thread

like cable laid at deepest depth

at bottom of the sea

or thinnest filament in dome

of the earliest light bulb

is surely within

and what is in between.

Alterations

My grandmother was a seamstress

and so to pay money to have someone

hem pants seems wrong:  to have the skill

and not the time, to go outside

for the stitch.

Happy to still find the sound,

as if there is still a pulse,

patting the piles of paper

the stacks, on my hands and

knees, redialing, my own

number, the charge has not

worn down, as if here is how

you manage it, here it is

of course there’s still a pulse in

the mislaid sleeping cell phone

following its pulsing cell, its sound,

here it is, close to me, it was

close to me, across the room, i

groped, i listened, i waited,

paused, it was not visible

to me, it was so faint

there underneath a book called

Saints and Strangers,

which i had only recently taken off

the shelves again.

(                                        )

if the silence is to be believed

the places between parentheses

the space between the shoulders

that awful pause

how

and then

the bird’s staccato hems stitching outside

the spoon against the side of the bowl

a whistle in the

kitchen

It Squalls.   It Ceases.

It Squalls Again. It Stops.

It Gusts. It Drives

across Peninsula.

Regardless. It finishes

declaring itself Relentless.

Driven. Bearing Down

Pelts. Lashes —

Afterwards –

the bird

flies away

(i) ask to be listened to

from this complex sphere

from inside also this complex sphere

to walk a plain path

under an eighty-one percent illuminated moon.

.

.

.

psalm  27

with passport in hand

with license with photo

with registration card

reading both of the provisions

under penalty

I signed my name

twice

that I was who I was

and lived where I lived

and had not moved.

I read

I wrote.

I read

I write

and I walk to the polls

in their footsteps.