and I wander around on the ceiling
in my funeral clothes among the gaudy
mushrooms of lightbulbs until I am struck

As for disappointments she’s had her share,
joining now with the horizon’s grief

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

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

April 2020

When I came to—crocuses were pushing up
purple in my garden, return of the cooing dove—

and when I got out at Penn Station there were no faces
along the tracks—

wind blew through 32nd Street with a faint whiff of onions
and hair spray

I stand by the stove, boiling tea, and trees climb down
through the winter hills to bring me news.

Grief, do me no favors. I have grown my hair long,
as you bid me. I have learned to roll
a coin below my knuckles. I have written down now

The part
that flusters some, that flusters no one.

I followed a ribbon that trailed from a hand
and it led through the grazing of crowds upon pavement,

In the midst of winter, where moonlight carves
stillness into the shape of hills, there is
a cabin feeding smoke to the low-hanging sky,