They always said it was horrible,       the way the man
who looked like my father died.          Sometimes, it was what
                                                                                                        appeared

I would like to tell you
that I went easily
or that, hand over hand,

Now only one thing is bright enough
to cast a shadow—Venus.

You can take my hand
anywhere. Tonight,
let it be the story of smoke

Each day the purple clematis climbs further up the wire beside the kitchen door
Green fingers twine around the strands of wire
And soon there is another blossom with a yellow star at its center

In 1834, when Alexander Kinglake
stood by the banks of the Sava River,
at the frontier of the Ottoman Empire,

The story of how the animal was sent
across the Mediterranean on a ship,
wearing a strip of parchment around her neck

You are not Aldebaran, glaring and bloodshot
eye of the bull, head lowered, about to gore me.
You are not Antares, the falsely young, speaking

Some of the sailors
change easily. Brought
into my presence

As soon as he realized he was lost, that
in kicking around his new job in his head,
the new people he'd met, and how