I envy the cellist with the sculpted barrel
between her knees.
I envy the violinist, the trainer of a mahogany bird

There is a cataract of blood over the dawn;
I know by watching
from the river’s fringes of wild grass

As if they were trying to build on a different thought
the clouds accumulate between sun and the city,
so the beams go wide and break into sheaves of light.

Breath through the flute like light constrained
in a prism, rays, and is made to weave
a tense web trembling as the notes blow over a

The wind and the rain, the trees swung like a bell
all across Massachusetts in the fall,
and the torn fog steaming from the yellow mountains,

    Lack-luster      We told them these were our “long, empty
     friends and     hours” and that we’d nap or primp,
acquaintances     but instead we rose to all the trappings

Dear Emile, I'm tolerating the tribute
of these flowers in the garden you once planted—
their modulating wits, the conspiratorial

Gothic flowers bedded themselves
in the edges of this night, the night
when a bullet pierced her rib precisely,

At the Crux

     Grieving takes its lyric turns,
         anciently,
            sometimes en pointe.

Gaily experienced and somewhat accidental
The disaster which overtook them
Surrounded the discameled travelers.