Noise is relative, too, like space
and time. For fish, who live packed
in water, the massive crash of a leaf

My head emerging from this paper box—
not heavy but sufficiently opaque
and put there up across my balding pate

He knows the way
across, he sees
where every stroke will lead.

Old Wordsworth’s world (who wrote a hundred hundred
sonnets, songs of rivers, lakes and trees)
was bowls of steaming porridge, moonlight, breezes

And even fish, pulled from lakes and ponds
and swimming, now, in glassed-in tanks with bubble
baths, and growing fat on food for free—

No definition tells you rooms exist:
touch them too hard, too long, and like mimosa
they close against a stem so sightless green

We chug and churn like clumsy gears, machined
for motion but clanking, slow, heavy with friction.

Everyone has advice, lots of suggestions,
Some bring him plastic bowls, tin cans,
Old buckets; someone with half a degree

Nothing in all the world is quite so lonely as a lover who wants to love but loses his beloved in a jungle the two of them helped one another create, plant by tree by vine.

Rose petal, rose mouth, rose, open to humming
beaks and hairy bees, swinging warm
in sun, rose wet with inner dew,

Dogs bark, say the Russians,
But wind blows it away.

Until the lid is on the box
the box we are is open
except when it’s not