You mocked me that hot day at Carcassonne,
“We’re tourists now!” waving the green Michelin.
We’d come to meet your old pals from Tucson—

If we could see the lake someday without
the heaviness the clouds are always casting
in pewter ridges, would there be a doubt

I lived in the poor part of town
where the hookers hung out on the street corners at night,
and sometimes,

Coffee: the tightening at the heart,
The wreath of ice, like thorns
Arranged there to give pleasure,

Breath through the flute like light constrained
in a prism, rays, and is made to weave
a tense web trembling as the notes blow over a

From tiny up, a grand jeté to a slow freight
was basic movement, or losing a footrace allegro
to neighborhood punks. And to fast-talk my way

As if encarmined tulips opened
with a sudden pop like that of a toy pistol
morning surprises you again,

Happy baby. Bobbing. Strong arm. Slap. Hard 
water. Bottle-green swells smack, splatter. Chuck 
the chin. Bluster. Rip-roaring rumpus. Scutched. 

“Each ray of sunshine is eight minutes old,”
Serge told me in New York one December
night. “So when one looks at the sky, one sees

Now you are a bag of ash
Scattered on a coastal ridge,
Where you watched the distant crash,