Okay         A nightingale 
does sing 
                 outside this window 

Sleeping within earshot of the Aegean
once more, I forget where I am
a second & mistake the surfs white noise
for rain, unheard-of here

A toe dances under my nose         My eye
Takes it from there, moving on up peekaboo style
Over ankles and calves past kneecaps to thighs—

To maintain these depths of misery
takes work given my buoyant disposition;
for every sill of my flesh

Over the tops of the lockers,
I hear a woman

I think, sometimes, of how you blocked
The future, as if it were a scene, and wrote it
In a letter before you drove all night through snow.

It is gravitas, the gray of quarry stone, the burden
of the middle plane, the moving toward the heavy hour
the angels come, bearing grief whose name is benediction.

 The leaves are curled like fingers from which the wrist
Is broken. The X-rayed wrist in four parts, with a
                                                                                triangular island

It is called Trent or Noel
for the most beautiful girl
turning woman on the continent.

This right eye establishes
grounds for consistency.
He’s a burr I can’t get rid of.