Telling our story is . . . painful as anything
I’ve ever done. More painful than. A lapse
Of time so long and I’d assumed, wrongly,

Rainstorms that blacken like a headache
where mosses thicken, and the mornings
smell of jonquils, the stillness

When I consider the children of the middle class
as representations of phenomena to my subject sense
I can hardly see them at all, they fade

It is called Trent or Noel
for the most beautiful girl
turning woman on the continent.

You, who live in this world, & claim to understand about everything about life—lyricizing in your written words about how
Love Is At The Heart of Things
(With its lovers coming & going)

On the first day of viburnum
I followed a school bus for five miles
past the magnolias and the copper lions

I am sitting thirty feet above the water
with my hand at my throat,
listening to the owls go through the maples

I could live like that,
putting my chair by the window,
making my tea,

I lay forever, didn’t I, behind those old windows,
listening to Bach and resurrecting my life.
I slept sometimes for thirty or forty minutes

Fog hides the shallow ditch, no more
Than a grassy furrow, marking the edge of our land.
Oak wees and thorned acacia bend over it,