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

My mother made figs in wine—
poached with cloves, sometimes a few peppercorns.
Black figs, from our tree.

Spring comes quickly: overnight
the plum tree blossoms,
the warm air fills with birdcalls.

 I had left my passport at an inn we stayed at for a night or so whose name I couldn’t remember. This is how it began. The next hotel would not receive me. A beautiful hotel, in an orange grove, with a view of the sea.

Who cares if something simple happens in a complicated
manner? I could fall off a rock and only shake myself
up. There might be some very delicate maneuvers

I would like a word with you 
now that the night is through 
                                  with you 

Knock on any door
For any real reason,

Asking for money, say,

 

The shape of loneliness is a hole
By definition, to be filled.

At the outer edges of the hole
The lizard of jealousy sits

All summer, I watched them
make their ghostly caduceus through water—

fleeting, heraldic—

Sometimes, on evenings like this, my mother will speak of Tom Scott,
going down to a place inside her beyond the river's high reach,
to a place where grief has no pallbearer except the river;