“let’s celebrate a beautiful year,”
said one particularly sentimental mosquito
on a sideways tree in central park.

she and five girlfriends floated down
and joined us by the earth.
they paused over me, breathing my air

then moved on, instead
choosing his calf muscle for their joie de vivre
—his blood is sweeter than mine.

there exists a breed
of butterfly that lives
on the blood of departed
human bodies.

from afar it is mistakable
for a monarch--
the covergirl fireflower
of the insect world
who drinks from petunias.

A lion, all gold and sand and sunset, wandered
into a suburban living room,
curled up beneath the pendulum clock,
and lay against the leather couch.
The family—a husband, a wife, a teenage
daughter—were gentle. They looked at this
king at their feet, and had no thought to hurt him.
They had lost their dog, and were in the market
for soft company.

The girl named the lion Frederick. She read him stories.
She took him to the window, and showed him the
fence around the yard.

The father scratched Frederick's ears each morning as he drank
his coffee and read the New York Times. The mother
cooed babytalk to him while she washed the dishes.

Frederick had no time to think. This was his home now,
he knew intellectually.

But his name was not Frederick. He felt that.
His claws were dull. His eyes
were half-mast, house-cat-sleepy, even with the sun.
He was not a house-cat, and he forgot.

They loved him
and they loved him
and they took the wild right out of him.

He was a year into his picket-fence when a scratch came at the
window in the evening mist.
A deer stopped in its tracks, locking eyes with Frederick,
unmoving.

Frederick stood, nudged open the door through which he’d come,
and roared. The deer fled.

The lion stretched his legs and and ambled out toward gold and sand and sunset. He did not look behind.

when he died, his jackets all went
to the grandkids (world-war-two-chic was
en vogue), his medals to his sons, and his
meticulous preparations for any far-off
hurricane, blizzard, fabled connecticut sandstorm,
power outage, overheating engine,
skinned knee
to the big and elegant dumpster.

his wife in her heels-for-every-occasion, in her
quiet knowing
languages and recipes and birdseed
loved him even after she forgot his name
and hers.

they built this house bare-handed
and in the shade of the trees
and spiders and cell-phone towers
it will stand as ever
it always has.

A vinyl record makes the rounds, dust attached loose to the needle, imperceptibly
breaking
off
making
short
homes
for each
molecule
in each
black
groove.
Your hurricane breath will send them subatomic-
Superdomeward on your next mad quest
to convince your girlfriend that you are neat&clean.;

You sit crosslegged, Buddha on the brain,
corporation on the docket.
Which
one
do
you
dream
of?
And more importantly,
which
one
should
you
dream
for?
The twenty in your pocket will get you one-fifth of a silver ring
or five turkey sandwiches.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too”—it wasn’t Buddha who said that, but
it’s Buddha’s smiling voice in which you hear it now, between your ears.
“What the **** does that mean, Buddha?” you sigh, and there is no answer.

You move, and move, and you keep on moving. You leave a little molecule
on the subway, and on the bar, and on the sidewalk without feeling it, losing them to
short
homes
vulnerable.
The hurricane breath or the sunshine or the invisible rubber glove of
Buddha, or Carl Solomon, or Walter Cronkite or God or whoever does the universe’s spring cleaning
will send them subatomic-Superdomeward
and you’ll never even know you missed them.

Your girlfriend thinks it’s realcool you have a record player,
but it’s a little dusty, she says.
You touch her lower back and smile. You get eye-level with the needle,
and you blow.

I saw the weather there
seventy-eight every day (every day) as long as you wait
for the clouds to burn away
they always
they always do

I saw the future there but don’t know yet if it’s
mine

I saw faceplates facades and artifacts there—painted bricks you couldn’t tell from the
real red bricks on your granddad’s house
(you don’t so much
remember what they looked like, but you are confident
that the difference is negligible)

I didn’t see much else there but the weather
boy
the weather is pretty in the afternoon

you've got a photographer's
eye
and no camera
you look real close
to remember