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;

A time comes of silence and secret Sargassos,
the desolation of tourists and billboards,
a time of seamless ennui: