There remains only the flutter
Of minute desirable death-pangs
In the high garden once more locked.

              is that we should begin in transit,                      in or near a vessel,
as we do here        and then we leave this place             and
the skittering quality that follows                                        festive scene, song

                Pop Imaginary
returns                                                         and ascending gray

In Rogier van der Weyden's Annunciation
The Holy Ghost enters the Virgin's chamber
As a dove gliding on a beam of light—

First the choughs
in a band of three:
red beaks lit

We decided to stop drinking and spend Sunday at the zoo. It was going nicely until she worked herself up over the observation that it was a horrible thing to cage the animals.

He's the camera, I'm the pose. In this photograph I am
happy.
                                •

Driving out to Long Island over the Williamsburg Bridge
I spot the young white men on the rooftop.
There’s a bottleneck as the ribbons of feeder lanes
Merge, and the boys on the roof laugh, one of them
Cradles a mock rifle, another cocks his thumb and forefinger
Into a pistol—the way of cowboys and Indians, the way of kids,

Mind-potent men in their mastery,
     Flowers and floaters,
Prey and pray, pretenders to the real,

Stay where ideas are underground.
The pure essence is a green willow slip.
As a snake slumbering under the mountains.