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.

Rain

When I had my visionlike the dark structures of communicationturning somewhat lucid I thought these borrowed breaths could picnicfor a century and that distancewould allow the windmillsto stall and dryinto an afternoon landscape and my dear childwill you ever knowhow I saw the greatohio emberrain movelike a hand with its palmsraisedthe admission of the strangethe rainfloating acrossthe impermanent shore another

sunwhere darknessdecays

Mother with Daughter

There is an interruption being built within the poememptying my bookto drown the addictionthe clean

daypacked a lunchkeeps more of the work in the presentcontinuious presentround mouthneither

the color of wine or waterorators, lovers, and funeralsrain in a dreamhands love youautotelic
The child is a little youyou holding her legs raisedcoupled under your armsroundedoutside of youher

headnestledunder your chinlong locks of hairone backcurvedback
and you will become someone completely foreign to your self

Echoing

Last century

when the stars cried out their addresses

you slipped off your dresses

the two flowered ones

when the stars cried out their addresses

What were you wearing?

the two flowered ones

the lights dimmed close

What were you wearing

to the earth and whole arms?

the lights dimmed close

were back logging their questions

to the earth and whole arms

and the few like dramas

were back logging their questions

and exaggerated loves

and a few like dramas

blue from the curtains

and exaggerated loves

closing and covered in shadows

blue from the curtains

last century

closing and covered in shadows

you slipped off your dresses

I am in a Tremendous Dog Fight

It shines

suffices to say

and is done well

like the soon

to be cut lawns

the terrible gravity

of how we place

our ornaments

drifting seeds

without the mailman's

communicable ginseng

with out the men

who fancied my mother

who said this can happen

from the burning streets

and coffee poured cities

and the sense to picnic

like crumbs about your feet

the famous drop cloth

with the occasional factory bell

ringing against a spiraling background.