things are easily forgotten.
yesterday, i was surprised to find 
an ash burning its way 

“Beginning at five o’clock, just before dawn rises
in the rear-view mirror, I drive at eighty, alone,
all day through Texas. I am a pencil extending

I will strike down wooden houses; I will burn aluminum
clapboard skin; I will strike down garages
where crimson Toyotas sleep side by side; I will explode

Leather banquettes in old green edge the room.
A drab green of animal scales, guarded
Under agave, on days too hot to move.

“She turned her face to the wall.” The Wing, of the Dove.
Marcel: “At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall…”

The avenue rises toward a city of white marble.
I am not meeting anyone. The capitol is empty.
I enter the dome of sleep.

The bed, the laminated stand,
With soap on it and towels, folded, four, five,
Piled like snow.

We’ve come to expect earthquakes, fires, hurricanes,
and tidal waves from our whitecoated brothers
whose laboratories shed radiation

Alexander, first over the wall,
collapsed battered by stones. Instantly
the Macedonian companions
gathered their shields over his body

Mime the loud wind in pain—
The worded room will yield
Your canny agony