Maybe it’s a bat’s wings
at the corner of your eye, right
where the eyeball swivels

Contaminated air, poisoned ground,
Infected bodies in the cemetery, and the dead
Scattered in the fields in grievous wars,

In Classical Attica it wasn't heinous,
tanned Danaan hands consigning cherubs
to the gods' protection, to die in earthen pots.

I see it like a movie screen:
salty green horizon, cloudy blue water.
You step, a pillar on the deck,

What would the world be without
poetry, he asked, and I listened,

his thin Thracian fingers plucking

I got away with it all summer will
I get away with it all fall
& more importantly winter.

It is the first day of spring, the children are singing
(they are supposed to be sleeping) the clock is ticking
the cats are waiting for supper, one of them pregnant

Once I'm sure there's no one else around I
climb, spider-silent, toward my treehouse, held like
a saucer on fingertips in the middle limbs of the oak.

Above the dog-eye-colored land
And town of San José
Of hot dog-fur and tin,

All bubbles travelling

In tubes, and being lights:  up down and around
 They were:  blue,  red and every man uncaught