In 1936 it was a hot spring in
Cincinnati
We were in English class and the

My Dalmation yearns to speak to me this morning.
She is more-than-elegant in her sleek musculature—
demure, nubile, oddly cat-like before breakfast.

I envy the violinist, the trainer of a mahogany bird
perched on his shoulder.

They carried the lamps out as if they were children.

The piano remained in the hall, like an obelisk,
as if to haunt the place we had to leave;

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,

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