Once I’m sure there’s no one else around I
climb, spider-silent, toward my treehouse, held like
a saucer on fingertips in the middle limbs of the oak.

What were those days like? Remembering
is like remembering

In scrolled aves
and erect
seraphic wings,

At the edge of the world
where Ocean begins and ends
the great serpent consuming its own tail

The birds with fiery plumage perched
like epaulets on the general’s statue

You with a muse of your own
in the old gallery
that profile of grave beauty

Years have passed since you were in my city—
our city, then-and certain aspects of a certain day
remain with me like film in a goblet after wine.

I went to the liquor cabinet and filled my empty jar with a
bit of each, called it mayonnaise and began to sip, trying to
get caught for something other than this. My deeds are negligible
and death is strong. The rest comes easy.

I came to Alabama for the dreams

   of Sun Ra, who said he was born on another

impossible, uninhabitable bottom land and unreconstructed

at Delphi. Some judgment! Now I've got osteonecrosis,

talk about the dead speaking through us.
The fountainhead cut off the flow to the corpus,