You can’t think of that pine tree by the window
without your mind skipping and scraping over rocks

In the Parable of Fire a driver who has been dozing
lowers his car window and pitches his cigarette

Skin pallid, lips painted,
jars of pills on the bedside,
you are beautiful.

From a live oak, a feeder swings
in a gust of wind I can barely hear
as I reread your postcard of Ayrshires

I keep returning to that window
in the mountains of southern Bavaria.

Dark vines snaking the hillside where
The Sabines lived, where everything slants,
  Where a village clings to the hill

Two ospreys stir the branches over our heads
And circle the wide water. Cormorants,
The year’s first mackerel running in the weeds.

Take Antoine Guillemet instead.
  When he was following that dirty gang
    I thought we lost him. Blinding poppies,

She hears the story again, and this time, instead of feigning interest,
instead of placing the right amount of incredulity in her voice,
she hangs up when the caller says everyone is vulnerable,

Leonardo da Vinci thought that you must make
the conquered beaten and pale, sides of the nose