They have come from dinner at the nearest new restaurant—
you know the kind: bottle glass in the window,
brass rails, and a fanciful line of red neon

Mostly my nightmares are dull. My ex-wife yells
and I yell back. The cat bolts out the door
and bites the neighbor’s child. Or else

The gravestone-looking slab donated to the college
for instructing students about light and dark
and the rotation of the world stands solemnly

The onion is frost
shut in and poor.
Frost of your days

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,

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

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