The storms that make it into poems most often
leave something like disaster in their wake:
the wine-glass elms in pieces on the lawn,

Though prudes once thought St. Gaudens’s golden-thighed
Diana too exposed to perch above
the old squat pile of Madison Square Garden,

She points to the German twins etched on the handle
of the clippers. “Your moon’s in Gemini,” I murmur.
“Gemini who?” she says, pulling away

It was probably Persian and certainly blue—
the bowl with patterned birds on the coffee table.
With a twist of the vacuum hose I broke it in two,

You hoarded oyster shells through the R months;
they jut from the backyard garden like unwashed ears
of earth, and listen to your footsteps growing heavier.