Dear Beings, I Can Feel Your Hands

Small voice of my father saying

little piece of dirt facing

small boat harbor—

On Tuesday, meteor

and then on

Thursday, riptides. Spouting

Horn—What am I? To be

the mast of such great admiral—

Sit down. Dear beings, I am afraid

I have lost my ruthlessness and cunning

along with a bay horse and turtledove. There

are flowers stuck to the ceiling. Seriously.

What have I near the water? My family

moves around me. I have decided

nothing (scares me). I look out across the water

and a spindly black spider

turns out to be a tide crab. Little sister

saying that’s a moth’s wing—up close

Set waves, tide

more like a feeling—my mother saying     look

at how many people died while we were away—

Thin series of blurs

like I was never there at all

Like the other day I heard a woman

talking to her friend at the bar     I feel

like I’m not good enough. I’ll never make money

again, never fall in love. I don’t know

where to go when the doors close—

I can’t just go out and buy a wheat-colored soul

write a sadder poem—startled

by windows curved up in the shape of

fins. Up and behind my head

the shadows on the table spin

for us. We are in love—if I could

spend my life  beneath palm fronds

into which walk     little birds and saunterers

Clouds wrapped around iceplants     if I could only

find one of the letters to God

in the street—I am still new to town

The kids on the lawn go around

the light. I don’t get it. The first word

I hear on my birthday

is windowbox—charming of treetops

and songs on the radio

calm me down. Disarmed

but hopeful—thank you

I look up and

cathedral,
          spotlight

not having to

          imagine beautiful rooftops

—I find myself in that

                         §

And the feeling of girls laughing downstairs—

lucky enough just to scan the flights of birds

stand under bleachers     in the snow

blurting out kisses—like a man

the cards kept urging forward

the world so rare it ripples

in the photos I develop, I tell the clerk     go somewhere

and make yourself happy. All the lights in the ceiling

say flood. Make me happy—feeling of.   I say

a feeling left of

windblown. I want to live

in a world where rooftop tennis courts

covered in confectioners snow stadium lights

on all the south-facing windows—world where

gates ajar     rend my prayer

where
                  wren—

Blackout

Night over asphalt—passages in the snow—night over asphalt
just wanted to be a host—a place for brightness to pass over
a million different animals all crashing into a kitchen and breaking
nothing—keep thinking: God moves to the ends of our prepositions
like an open shirt—suddenly it’s all leaky doors and thunderstorms
like forgetting something—it’s all green—and then a blackout
everyone in streets

§

          the wind that hit
those grasses
          was an animal. I mean you
can see it
          but only in patches. Only
by the yellow light
          its teeth flashes off
I was driving downtown
          when what I thought
was chandeliers
          was sky actually
teethed on two sides
          by exposure to buildings and trees
a new kind of world—its name

                       I believe you and it really is glorious—really

          something else
Not the real but stuck to it
          Not full, shot through with
light—if I ever stop thinking
          this is a wilderness
pepsi can forest
          in the tall rusty bushes
growing through steel dark
          bleachers, echo of
somebody else’s for-rent
          whisper on the phone—if I ever
wanted to be this carousel
          of night sounds—all I can think of
I want to be an extra pair
          of movie-set lights
I was standing in flowers
          inverted by bell shapes
and suddenly everything’s done
          so forwardly—