Like Proust’s maman, she stayed in when I prowled
the alleyways at night, making a point
of waiting, lit up in the window, gold

Hudsons and Studebakers ruled the streets, 
a crossing guard and teenagers the pavement 
when I was eight. But that was an improvement 

shadows of cows in a pond once
became emblems of the heat

                                   They must not settle, the façade
shall revert to the stones.

 Tomorrow, underneath earth, again (I have foundered,
coursed) the colter, as you merge with the body of the day,
                                                           props its elbows

Between us,
I have seen the air like, to the haphazard foot, the heat
of the motion of the sun.

Edgar Pesach, the obituary writer, is on the roof of the Lincoln Plaza
Apartments. It is a deep autumn Sukkoth night.
The Philharmonic plays tonight—Boccherini, or Brahms?

We look at each other and are sad.
There’s a pear tree beside you,
(in fact you’re surrounded by fruit trees—

The valley otherwise
charred, this glade is
old-growth miracle.

This is what comes of a Lammas Eve, tho I did not think of that at all this
year until I had awakend at two in the night with the lines “My mother
would be a falconress.