You hoarded oyster shells through the R months;
they jut from the backyard garden like unwashed ears
of earth, and listen to your footsteps growing heavier.

The storms that make it into poems most often
leave something like disaster in their wake:
the wine-glass elms in pieces on the lawn,

Though prudes once thought St. Gaudens’s golden-thighed
Diana too exposed to perch above
the old squat pile of Madison Square Garden,

The solitary molar of a streetwalker 
whose body had gone unclaimed 
had a gold filling. 

Things you said in drugstores 
when buying painkillers 
or at your tailor’s

Never lonelier than in August: 
hour of plenitude—in the country 
the red and golden tassels, 

Rowans—not yet fully rowan red 
not yet in that tone they take on later 
of ember, berry, October, and death. 

O that we might be our ancestors’ ancestors. 
A clump of slime in a warm bog. 
Life and death, fertilizing and parturition 

       the baby, name lost. 1906. Spring born,
almond and blackthorn in bloom. Meadowsweet,
chickweed, petals of milk on her lips.

Spider-silk saliva from mouth to crab apple fists,
on Mother’s lap, the train from Kiev to Minsk
after the last harvest in Tiegenort.

Standing on the platform, Manchester Victoria,
waiting for the after-supper train. Home,
to Glasgow.