Seated towards the rear, facing backwards, smoking
in the cool day, he briskly turned his head

toward the stranger, who jumped onto the moving
streetcar, one hand holding her skirt up and

Those were the polio years. The war
Prospered. In Warm Springs Georgia
Strong-armed Sister Kenny

Because there are things we don’t understand, we’re shaking
our heads no. But still there are acupuncture needles,
mysterious as Excalibur, in a numb chest,

Mouse-ear, quack grass, shepherdspurse, are beautiful
but weeds. Their greedy merits need another kind
of seeing than we normally bring. There is no sputtering

A millipede-thing the size of a Brahma bull is devouring
palm fronds that are longer than stretch limos.
He watches the multiplied sun along its segmented armor; then,

That there’s a fun in funeral 
is goofus etymology, but a sensible reminder 
of the secret life in everything . . . how inside dear

In order to describe the appropriate action or conduct for any eventuality, we must first codify all eventualities. This is not so much forecasting the future, as it is prescribing all extrapolations of human capabilities; it is thus a concern with, not time, but exigencies extant in inner resources. 

When visiting a distant (and imponderable) shire,
one longs to hear the cry "Hygrometer!
Fresh hygrometer for sale!" Yes, and when the fair

Academia 1994: these dead white males
I've been hauling about in this brick of a box of a book
called Western Civilization—Homer, Plato, Melville,

Judith, I’ve seen the CPA. She showed me two
indomitable columns, numbers rising like the legs
of a statue god. And where they add up, where