You prefer me invisible, no more than
a crisp salute far away from
your silks and firewood and woolens.

The sky is not a glass of anything;
it winks, it’s a parable,
the kind your mother told whenever

Homepage image courtesy of Egres73, Wikimedia Commons

They were poor then but everyone was poor.
He hadn’t minded the sweeping,
just the thought of it

What did she know about Africa
Were there lakes like this one
with a rowboat pushed under the pier?

The panic grass is pushing up
serenity into an air
that has at last regained its pale.

My God, they were all so beautiful,
each parchment trumpeting its cursive praise
of Allah, whose residence m Istanbul

He who finds his business in the slow,
persistent study of one green stone,
even a plain one chosen, let us say,

A scattering of mind (like rain
flung out small and squalled
against the random panes

I was in the third seat of the station
    wagon and facing backward
when my mother veered