Targets Hit by Accident

And are we not just fragments

Sappho on the street corner

with a girl from Las Vegas

an empty room freshly painted

a mirror in the reflection of a lake

the dream of history reversing

out onto a funereal landscape

the water drop constellations

but I am not going to imagine you anymore

than I have to. One goes back to old sources

the ebb and flow of different species

of trees, the green moons of sleep

the endless fragrance of darkness

Are we not risking the next chapter

the abandoned lap, the fine result

that had easily come to us

O my dear nothing

your voice turned out to be

the same phantom

a tidal pool of words within earshot

It doesn't matter we've forgotten

the submerging months among

the fleeting absorptions

the loose daylight texture

the happy secrecy

the lucid cheerful insight

showing how much you know

etched into a cloud bank

against the ordinary eternity

The explanation will be better than the poem itself

The difficulty has been extended

out from what it needs to be.

And there has been no special

isolation. There has been no

quite walks out in the autumn.

No trying to get at it

as if with the absence of life

brings one closer to it, and then

to what has gone on further

down the road because of a sound

you thought you were being beckoned by.

But we find we are only trying

to keep as a surprise for ourselves,

the buzzing uneaten colors

of fall, the water necklace, and fish streams

a couple of page turning episodes

that is probably a good lesson

for artists of all kind. A peripheral

text draining out of an accordion

like glint off the bay. The possibility

of illuminating the witness

as though everything in her has been left out.

(sic)

Believe me bunny

I never meant to use the soap

and the toothpaste...yes

but only once.

I left the room

and the young their milk.

The fire pleases infinitesimally

and the ruddy nomadic geese

of course are a great instrument

and the dandilions poking

up their yup-yups

through the flagstones

help to measure the symmetry

I think I will eventually break

your heart like apple blossoms.

But now that you

are here in the flesh,

let me touch you.