I want color to braid,
to bleed, want song 
to fly to flex to think

A field sparrow 
is at my window, 
tapping at its reflection, 

The winter sun says fight.
The arctic blasts say fight.
This polar world is flat

Now. And now, a tiny foot, like
a shooting star, draws an arc
inside my belly.

The water tower poses a challenge. Against
   the shadows of the sky are planes of light.
There seems to be no touching, but actually

So as I was saying, on the way to work I saw
a deer. Sliding out of a turn, I was speeding:
He looked up in the slow way only a deer can,

Trussed in Christianity
Like some stretched fowl upon a spit,
His oil of kindness turned to bile,

They told her she came out of a hole in her mother
but really it’s impossible to believe
something so delicate could come out of something

Today the sun was shining
so my neighbor washed her nightdresses in the river—
she comes home with everything folded in a basket,

A cool wind blows on summer evenings, stirring the wheat.
The wheat bends, the leaves of the peach trees
rustle in the night ahead.