Our eyes nearly shut, we hadn’t planned
       To talk of death, when the word
            Itself, like a jolt

Not just because a child draws him — pie-faced and frontal, 
Grinning—it’s hard to watch the man’s head and hands take shape 
From a black magic marker, despite the other colors in the box: 

Never receives visitors, only inhabitants.
Outside, icicles thaw from the eaves in winter,
And even with its windows painted shut,

 By year’s end, some couples used book lights,
or even night-lights, so as not to make love
in total dark. What some told, others took in

Now the universe wants to be known for
Itself, isn’t that why we’re here
Popped out on this terrace the color of stars

Fat trains moved for a hundred years, the river’s been
Altered by Republic Steel. Perhaps things only happen
When they stop

A train of little m’s behind the plow. America:
So many centuries thicken its animal sound,
This mammoth that holds us between its knees,

Too much of a subject can interfere,
Be a drag, so subvert the procedure to which it refers
That the wisest course is to visit it just for fun,

The senses of one’s
life begin
to fade. Rather,

The time is. 
The air seems a cover, 
the room is quiet.