Sometimes I think you are absolutely right. Your
  rightness comes to me like the absoluteness
of God. I am vouchsafed the sudden glory

Antlers butting against the full moon.
Bellies lolling on my belly.

Creamy chestnut crania in convex cones.

Auto in sunlight: every trace of gloss
Is dulled a rusting green.
Even the fenders are a dirty chrome

We were driving north, through the snow, you said
you’d turned 21 during Vietnam, you were
1-A. The road curved

It was premonitions that kept us restless
the night before, visions of a gemlike lagoon
we’d push off into, the slim canoe

Come, be my camera.
Let’s photograph the ant heap
the queen ant

Two pounds of mestizo cornmeal
half a pound of loin of gachupin
cooked and finely chopped

It’s as natural to begin to age
as it is to insist
on chocking the wheels with heads of peonies

I finally broke down and opened the shoebox
which arrived just weeks after my father died.
All winter I had put it out of sight on top

Finally someone just drops it and breaks it
like a mercy killing, the cow butter dish,
it cracks easily into five pieces,