The skeleton clicks, endlessly doubling
over in my hands. Damned things that steal soul
and flee. Mine, the son of a virgin father

You get yourself to the point where
you’re sketching on napkins. How to
cluster the balloons, rate of lift. Altimeter,

It’s always already here, moment of deposit
unseen, wave reaching hardest to throw the carcass
where the next set can just reach to wet a flipper—

My neighbor who tends the rhododendrons
across the street—mulching, fixing soil acidity,
watering by hose for a long hour each evening—

Come fast over a hill
can’t slow or swerve
before it's broken

Somebody is always expecting you home.
Somebody’s saying you’ve been gone too long
and stayed too late, and no good can come of it.

Since everything I claim might be denied,
when I have the strength to forget, I forget.
And when I don’t, what an Elysium

Those who think only of weakness and pain,
   if they bothered to come here at all,
failed to hear in that homemade salpinx

Lemnos, you harbor me, moon-mountained
   and reticent, motionless in flux.
Dusk festers too long in the distance,

With the birds I suppose there is
small comparison no holding
up of what may be remembered