We had been looking at an idol in a glass case,
size of a hand, admiring her tough little knobs
and the ball of her belly some barren woman

How far does this street extend
beyond the cemetery, the Catholic school,
the oil refinery, the trolley’s turnabout,

Two flights of stairs through the narrow hallway,
entrance into a single papered room, the lover floating
above his beloved with head turned under neck to kiss her,

My Hamlet pulls his yes through an architecture of yeses
though it might appear that he merely negates,
sitting in the dark after murder,

A man with angelic locks and a woman
with no head are sketched in flagrante, standing
up. Or rather, he stands, while she levitates

Roots and rocks emerge from the forest path like half-
      spoken thoughts,
or as Thoreau would put it, the earth is saying “rock.” And

They faced each other on the oval knoll
and drew in the dirt the face they sat across from,
first with a finger and again with a stick

Poor Aunt Midge, who: 1. refused to change
however times did; 2. spread a) expansive memories
through Maine and b) jarred orange marmalade on scones;

I will not give in. I will grow more strange.
I will wrap myself around your ghost till the ghost
itself wants letting go, till it shimmers free.

In spring all the poems that need to be written
Have. You are neither dejected nor relieved. Scrape and
Paint. Scrape and paint a gray house white.