is visible to the sculptor
but it is invisible to me

After the D&C, she stood waiting for a taxi
In the clinic awning’s shade. It was afternoon in her
Comfortable little city, early rush hour. She could hear

In the 7-11 parking lot, white boys are terrorized
By a Lincoln stereo punching out 98-decibel jazz. The scene
Reminds them unconsciously of high-art cinema shot

Heraclitean, for instance: the world as a gaseous
Shimmer, like afterburner fumes in the oily night sky
Outside Carbondale, where lovers pass through the flux

Bending over the map on the floor
that unfolds like a rare carpet
we trace our trip with warm, stumbling fingers.

Visiting them, we slow down, straighten up,
as if we were approaching an open coffin
or rows of newborns behind the hospital glass.

I heaved my thick world history book
above my classmates’ heads. It arced,
flapped open, boomed against the blackboard.

Grandmomma plucked pin-feathers. I stared
into the cavity and tried
to imagine such jumbled, meaty things

I hear a river thro’ the valley wander
Whose water runs, the song alone remaining.
A rainbow stands and summer passes under,