What I have learned to do is place one thing
Beside another, using nothing more
Than sharpened sticks to guide them into place,
Where they never fit quite perfectly. You
And I were perfect once, or as close as
Apples side by side on an old canvas,
Unthinkable that one should decompose--
An accidental knowledge of the fall.

Astonish me again with those green eyes,
That see me for the fool I've always been.
One passing taste beneath the lonely sky,
A coupling held against the night
Where lovers have no need of hungry words,
And I no more than breath have need of you.

The best words ever written couldn't change
The color of the leaves before the fall,
Or how your eyes tonight give up their pain.
True love is marvelously strange.
So close your eyes and change the way you see
This language born of darkness and disease,
Slow-footed, naked, treading burning coals.
A scarring, then the soul comes free.

I've never known a poet who didn't
Wish at least most of the time that he could
Be a lineman, say, or else a fireman,
Even better, rescuing animals
And people discovered in a bad way,
Or perhaps a musician, for whom words
Are always buried in a dying song.
But tonight I envy the sweeper, whose
New machine cost eighty grand and flashes
A yellow light at five miles an hour
Up and down Olive Street, where I abide.
I'd wear headphones and smoke a pipe, I would,
And the world would be cleaner when people
Awake. Instead i've lost the urge to sleep
And cannot be persuaded by the pills
Or longing spent earlier in the dark.
I'm settled in, content to mark the time
From sun to sun, while no cars pass this house,
With pent up language of a modest sage,
Renouncing what the night has said, just me
And this steely-eyed old man who's run his
Rig on every street in town, both up at
3 A.M. and he's the one getting paid.

This slender evergreen should scratch your name
Against the perfect sky. You're not alone
While someone loves you, if anyone knows
Still what it means to hold a fragile heart
And not be frightened by the memory.

Last year, despite his long gone testicles,
& 91 dog yrs of innocence,
Old Jack got dragged around the whole back yard
By his bone, by a coybitch he lives with.
He's a lucky dog, but he's 98
Now and down in his hips. He cries at night,
Housebound by his infirmities and I
Talk to him, touch his head and give him pills.

I remember my grandmother's voice--
You old dog you; I love you like jackfrost;
Mothers are like that, yes they are. She lived
To 95, forgetting for the last
Four who she was and where she was and why.
Should you or I be 1/2 so fortunate.

An old dog doesn't know he's dying, just knows
It's harder to live. I blow smoke in his ear
And we watch ****** stories, real and imagined.
Forensic files, Hitchcock. He struggles to stand.
I'm slow at doing what I have to do.
This morning, like most, weather permitting,
We're 2 blocks down the street from
Where we live. He struggles to ****--
Cancer blocks his peristalsis, makes it difficult
To squat. And I  stand ready with my Kleenex,
In case he gets it out on neighbor's or
The sheriff's lawn. Go ahead old friend, let it
Go. I'm right behind you.

I worked here once is how I know the place--
A volunteer, but now I've come for food
For my own kids, to stand in line with kith
And kin and not discuss the kind of votes
That gave the rich a little more and us
Not quite enough to feed our kids or pay
The rent or buy a car or keep the dog.

On a clear day the morning light comes through
The dining room window, through the open
French doorway and, now that the time has changed
To save daylight, pools on the wan face of
Ophelia floating on her back above
The mantle, Pre-Raphaelite splendor
In a second-hand dress at eight-thirty
While I scribble and watch the news. Today
A new resignation, an ongoing
Investigation. Something is rotten,
Madness encroaches. Widespread melancholy,
Floating through forget-me-nots and poppies,
Singing.