Well, sainthood’s a bottomless pity,
                                                                   as some wag once said, so
Better forget about that.

Saturday. Early afternoon. High
Spring light through new green,
                                                    a language, it seems, I have forgotten,

There was an odd community giddiness
in that orange-stand shaped like a pagoda,
but also a fabulous wittiness.

What man, tell me, ever
crossed the street like that,
an angle boxed on a sign,

I am what I deserve, blinkered, public,
Get-atable, indecorate, with finch-like tints,
Neither black nor white but always gray,

No one is willing to suggest
it’s miraculous: the blood-like strain
weeping from the third of several

By the fifth day of rain
a few had begun to dance,
though not quite properly,

When I was born my mother said she had prayed so long I
   must be a miracle.

Blessings on the hunter and the hunted
whose iconography of rifle and bone
whined and hissed and sparked and charred,

I sit at a table of actors, who show us all
how incredible the corn chowder tastes to them,
or how aghast they were backstage last night.