Over the tops of the lockers,
I hear a woman

Old cadences, cracklings along the sight line,
your arms thrown back, I remember this,

On the pale morning I left town
I was thinking about women,
and later, in the Rockies where work was scarce,

When I was born, I woke in the bedrooms
of admirals. Now I want a sky so blue
it is arrows. I want to sleep under the jawline

Its blue cathedral is trembling into the marrow
of my mouth. Its sharp houses split open

Thrust out of lips’
thick glottal languishings
a thrashing labyrinth

Out of lapis blue the face
         rises
round and smiling like a bell.

Two by Tiepolo, both depicting cages.
In one the long-nosed Punchinello stares at a tiger
in a cage mounted on large wagon wheels. In Visiting

Daughter of thunder, she of lightning, she
   Of rain, met on the heath, with what
Remained for him to find out and for them

Snow fell all night and suddenly there was morning:
a startling vision from a familiar window,
   while yet an ordinary sight: a