A scattering of mind (like rain
flung out small and squalled
against the random panes

He who finds his business in the slow,
persistent study of one green stone,
even a plain one chosen, let us say,

It is gravitas, the gray of quarry stone, the burden
of the middle plane, the moving toward the heavy hour
the angels come, bearing grief whose name is benediction.

I think, sometimes, of how you blocked
The future, as if it were a scene, and wrote it
In a letter before you drove all night through snow.

Rome in November evening many thanks
the smooth marble reef the cold tile-faces
the spray of lights before the gate closes

Under the olive trees the light pours out its seeds,
poppies appear and begin to flicker,
burning the oil that feeds their fire;

It began with the deer, dead in the water 
Just off my parents’ dock, 
And then there was a procession of horses,

        After the snow, after carved corpses
exposed the icy survival of the last 
     Donner Party members, the Belgian

Before God created people, 
he made animals,
unnamed and marvelous,

(What a Trojan horse) 
thought Matrigupta, 
rewarded for his verse