The frail smoke and virtues of the season blind 
us, almost with hands, and which of us can instruct 
the other now? I will have to find your body 

Their song is almost painful the way it
penetrates the air—above the haze and
level of the fields a thin line drawn. A

Flinging sticks and calling
to an amphibian black dog,
he clings, buoylike, though probably

Near the beginning of his first journey
The great traveller (who was to suffer
Shipwreck, the loss of all his wealth, his slaves

We mean it when we way, “Be careful,” and yet it seems now we aren’t meant to talk. Talk is the pool-sweep and renewal notice, or else just a reminder that we’re on the phone.

I have walked these streets so often I could
forge the shadows of skyscrapers as they fall
to rest between the sculptured air of midtown.

I was edging along a deer trail
past halfway into a thicket so dense
the tarweed stains never washed out

That year, sea-fog in tufted hanks
spun through the eucalyptus tops
below our attic flat,

It was fever that made the world
burn last summer, that afternoon
when I lay watching the sun pour

We fix the ages of the irises at flower,
stop the eons of the oranges at fruit.
For ripe is ready when we eat, and beautiful is full