Even the few here who regard themselves as aliens
Declare with their window boxes that they' re not ungrateful
For the happenstance of being alive,

The moon as brittle as a tooth

The moon mistaken 
For a fortune coming true

Wrong shirt at Ocean Park—
what you want preps an elementary doxy
for dogmatic chasing.

I asked you to have faith in me!
But the four comers of the world smile dumbly.
Envious as the mountain

The secret is
not to be afraid, to 
pour the salt, letting your wrist

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.