Because there are things we don’t understand, we’re shaking
our heads no. But still there are acupuncture needles,
mysterious as Excalibur, in a numb chest,

Thomas Bottle was thinking of all the things he hated: hair down his back when he got a haircut; his Aunt Fern’s kitty litter; ringworm; the loud women in baseball caps who came every summer to paint the ocean below his house; and Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to sell him Awake! and The Watchtower. 

 On the cold coast west out of Hoquiam
I’m a stalker with a short-handled gun,
looking for dimples in damp sand to scoop out

One morning I awoke
to a dead pigeon on the roof
of the building next to mine,

We are all connected, one unto another.

A bulb in my hallway has burned out. I keep fitting new bulbs into the socket. Nothing happens.

It begins in the back of the head,
gathering force like the strangler’s
mop in Slam sweeping across the floor.

Turning climbing slowly in late spring among
black trunks of high pines
talking of our lives few white words flying

Wherever I look you are islands
a constellation of flowers breathing on the sea
deep-forested islands mountainous and fragrant

Wherever I look you are islands
a constellation of flowers breathing on the sea
deep-forested islands mountainous and fragrant

A large room, with an upright harpsichord in one corner. A young lady was playing the instrument, whose face was heavily carved with cherubs and fruit. The young lady played a series of English folksongs and then slipped into Bach’s Passacagliain C minor.