It is all death, right from the start,
That fluttering agitation in the violins.
Even the love duet, by nightfall

                If you were fired and were free to go
                  From Appalachia to
                  The Apennines, would you

Each time my mind comes back to it, the reasons 
You gave me seem less substantial than before, to advance
Always less promise of an explanation

Some part of every living crearure
is always trembling, a curious
constancy in the wavering rims

Some sad Greek said the atoms swerve
and that’s how anything happens, “any­
thing” meaning not nothing. The nerve

came as a surprise, even beyond astonishment,
turned into a monument carved in rock
like Ozymandias, a hard fact. The self’s

One shoulder breaking the tension of a satin slip,
making the strap fall loose inside the dress.
Bend of the gesture sliding the strap back, into place,

Who was asking for it­—
Everyone can see
Even today in the formal courtroom,

This is the 5th time for me to be writing to you
& I promise it is the last.
I know your reading this Joyce Carol

My father naked in the photo, young
again, crouched among rocks and water. It's an island,
a time so long ago he is thin,