There is a hornet in the room
and one of us will have to go

A garnering squirrel makes a frantic chatter at a posse of cats
that sit and stare while their coats thicken

Centennial of Melville’s birth this morning.
Whale balloons drift up released by priests. 

The white attic rests
among dripping trees

The eye was a masterful horseman
Hardened, proud and fierce.

Men that have been bending all their lives
In the one dim lamp of a pension
To lift their needs, relax as in graves

It was always November there. The farms
Were a kind of precinct; a certain control
Had been exercised. The little birds

This field they’ve contracted 
us to separate from its surroundings 
I’ve stayed in bed watching as the 

a man stands
on his
head one

The room is too small; viscous Diana
stands with her hair in lamp, tassels

shade her in halos like comic book