I began with verse about Wyeth's Christina
but I couldn't see her face, and I've never been to Maine
though her twisted body pains me

then I flew to the opposite coast
summoned by the memory of a ghost:
my best friend at Bodega Bay, one fine day
forty Augusts gone

he threw a Frisbee to his Airedale
and we ate sprout sandwiches, avoiding the foul
karma from the slaughter of beeves,
hogs, he said

I would like to relive that day,
with its blue dusk, but the clock can't be rewound
and he is not to be found on the great Pacific

kin who barely knew his face
chose his final space--a hot hole on Oklahoma
prairies, not far from his drunken father
and others who never saw him watch
the sun sink gold into the sea

in my head I'll exhume him,
maybe return him to the waves
that reclaim all things

or introduce him to Christina
a continent away--he could help me know her
though her eyes face another world

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

One day, the door will be slammed one too many times and fall off its hinges.

If I don't make it to tomorrow, the notebook will be in my backpack.