The strong horseshoe shape of a horse’s mouth
Of his teeth, set that way of a suitcase handle

And the way a bit, in just that way, pulls him:

The whale eye of the sun in the thin gray overcast,
walleye of a gray wall of animal
washed ashore

If a man walks with one hand on the baby carriage
As he argues with the mother but picks blossoms
From the park trees to fold into the carriage

First we lose our shadows
walking together into the veiled fields
of shade tobacco.

At first sight muffled silence
at first sight the immanence of night
at first sight colors advance

When I go to the bathroom I see a beetle in the tub,
black, with a band of stone color
around the center, granite with a trace of

Not that his writing isn’t moving when
it doesn’t seem it should be,
owing in part, at least, to the cloud of difficulty

Remembering that war, I’d near believe
We didn’t need the enemy, with whom
Our dark encounters were confused and few

The knots tied by a river
become lost ends as the tangles
and meanders separate, cut off

Beneath a sky whose hardened violets
still chase a warm front’s temperatures along,
the mockingbird and mourning dove create