Times when the mountain is not here
except as the bells of cattle grazing
in the fog, or higher up, on the tropical side,

Marilyn (as Isabella): I had rather give my body than my
                                   soul—
            (as Marilyn): Some lines come more easily than

On the third floor
I urinate into a white bowl
hearing cars on Taber Avenue

Needled by the notion that a poet should know
      reality

in the swirling there is some meaning that draws me
without specific reference I’m saying to her vagina

It was about seven or eight years ago.
It was between the portly three-storey white house
and the faded red shed behind the lettuce patch.

Dear you know who you are:

You must be so relieved
to have, at last, the weight

of my affection off you.

The gift of clams is here, waiting
in the large bowl on the cutting table.
We are waiting: the clams

I read somewhere that every love
has its own government. Or was it
that every love has
the government it deserves?

You’re loose,
sometimes good
and lonely almost