Definitive Version

Weather vanes pointing in all directions
you.  An armistice in practice flies
in to the real thing. Even the parsimonious
are overjoyed and hand out a quail under
each arm. Olives exonerated a moment later
(always momentary) and an aviary wakes up
and blooms in a cherry tree.
You stand on the first bucket
and shout the colloquial name for water.
I call you my hemlock, my waterfowl
After that you were mine.

Sample History of Sense of Wonder

One can only lie back in bed and think that he
should bud somewhere in the wine cellar. Or, think,
flowers have a happier time of it, being
potted...you know the image.   One must write the story
in the laundry or on the back of a defeated
mermaid slipping below the surface no matter
if the lamp distorts the glare through the lugubrious
windows.  No matter if on Tuesdays love attracts
an obsolescent fruit or kisses dry wetting
another world but not his one.  A cluster
of tree boughs wag in a simplifying motion.
Bats siesta amid the clatter. That's what I
love about them, and my Aunt too!  But who
doesn't glimmer through the ash was what I was leading to.
Who doesn't use his lamppost as a searchlight
or a bread truck delivering a tapered roll
along with the wheat, the white, and the rye?

Memoir

Today I loaded up my car with my favorite collection
of grapes.  I was trying to make the world seem a little
bit different, but then a police officer pulled me over
and asked me for my license and registration.  I don't
have a permit for these grapes, I said.  I am transporting
them over the county line.  Some are poisonous and I
am taking them over to the duck pond to feed the swans.
I mean to watch their necks writhe.  He studied the photograph.
I said it was the only one left.  I said the rest have been made
into counterfeit likenesses of myself.  I said I no longer know
what I look like, and nowadays when I look in the mirror
I see someone else.  Someone with rose tinted sunglasses
pulled up along side of me.  He spoke to the officer as if he
had known him since childhood.  As if he was setting up an alibi
for a recent murder.  I sneezed very hard and a drop of blood beaded
up around my nostril.  I was praying it didn't fall because that would
have been the end of me.  I felt frail.  I no longer had the courage
to look at my grapes or say anything about how wrong it was of me
to think I could just load them up in my car and ride around with them.
How utterly immature of me to think this way going to be a joyride.
The world of adolescent foibles flooded back to me as fleshy
red and green translucent orbs. As they hit one by one
I felt emptier and emptier.  The man in the car smiled
at my sudden pallor.  I knew what he was thinking.  How clear and simple things
are when one breaks them down. But then like a character in a Sanskrit play
I lifted my head with a renewed appreciation.
 How really lucky I had been, how seemingly endless and happy.
How healthy too! And look at all these grapes!  Who was this man,
and what did he owe me except to bring me towards the rim of misery.
The officer looked at my photograph and then back at me
with mystery as mystery broke involuntarily across my face.

Collapsible Opera Hat

Put on your bracelet of moths
and rise like the hint of the kamikaze's
cologne lingering above the gasoline
soaked jacket you wear; we should
stopping dating ourselves and date someone
who can unearth love in this borrowed
and spelunking universe.  I'm stuck
with these claustrophobic fumes rising
off the furtive heads of swallows, which
are harmless unless descending into a
a pleasure boat.  Listen,  I was once
a vapor myself and my whole shtick
desperately hung in lonely bands
around the eyes like a mask.  But wait,
you can lick whatever mask I wear
I don't mind.  And in turn I'll show you
circling like the darkness of a musty
collapsible opera hat, a brave solution
tampered with braver indecision.

Bells

for Agha Shahid Ali
(d. December 8, 2001)


I was your trump card
and dotted the inner ring of tiny bells

bells...bells...bells...you wrote
and pomegranates

Listen...when the mayfly
when he is young
with water in his wings
flies gently backwards to his mate.

What an evanescent gesture.
And every poem returned to you backwards for years

Still the amputated fingers of boys
touched you in a dream.

Exiled, we leave one world
and go on to the next.
Like round silver plates encrypted with curry

Words can never be overused.
I will be your happy little Indian
that you will be, at last,
writing about, for at least,
the next few hundred years.

When Darling Opens Up Her Eyes

A lake that hasn't been skated
on.  A telephone ringing out its
desires.  A kiss on the face of
a dog. A firecracker a cut above
a roman-candle or star shooter
A smaller world, more likable
like a small boy named Benny
A tiny spark inside a whale
A flicker among sparrows
A taxicab plowing into a johnny blah
Then the whole theater darkens
A waiter politely removes our dinners
from the check.  A tiny hole the size
of an O opens and we jump
in afraid to tear it. We put our slickers
on because we have them
It is rocky so head towards the rocks

(Dip of Heavy Wings etc...)

Now that New Orleans sleeps
on the floors of changing
rooms one looks under
at the smiling women
like a spectator actually
feeling the magnificent
wave of the lit world beyond
the drowned (dip of heavy wings etc..)
Just sticking out one's neck
could mean an indelible
toasting.  But we peep out
of sheer joy.  Out of giddiness
like taking a cookie
and running upstairs
In other words this is
pealing off the label
Embracing the possibility
of spoonfuls of beauty
the size of a river
The delta expands
and more houses fall in.