My love, who yawns above cities feathered with soot,
      and over jungles deadly as an arsenal.

I am so cold tonight. Lend me your fever
to mull my long pastures of crumbling ice.

I am a garden graced by every beauty:
See my splendor, then you will know my being.
For Mohammad, my king, and in his name
The noblest things, past or to come, I equal:

Memory’s branch quivers
beneath the weight of a butterfly
How am I to know what it wants
without asking

 

A different tongue, you think,
would set you free. Imagine songs
you, disabused of old entanglements,
might sing. But only out of mastery;

Hunting along the logging road
swamped through to Pockwock Lake,
we stopped beside the spring to drink—
startled a drowsing snake.

The jay streaks through the lilacs
              in color clash.
I note down: Invent
     outdoor birdswing

Between laps the sun drops
through its arc, lurching
like the clock hand
I secretly watched

They are my parents.
Both are walking toward me,
she on the left with a mud caked
wooden box in her hand propped

Spheroid
Fruit, pleasing
To taste, fattened
By water gushing in all