Why don’t you go downtown—
in one manhole
and out the other—
past thirty-two

The man on stilts 
lights his cigar
from the glow

To talk about the weather is not just passing time
but an occupation in a city where weather
dictates streams of confused syntax like snow

Five is the sum of this world figured by the senses,
and the tally of the planets to the naked eye,
four directions with one person wandering at the pivot.

Having done compline by hand at the naked breast
with fingertip and ball of thumb, with tongue,

having with tonguetip traced from breastbone

The clock inside the mantid
       egg under the drifted snow,
  the sap clock in the February tree,

Here, in the xeroxed panorama on my desk, a man
is crouching slightly in his spacesuit, leaning
forward, hands swung up, as though about to leap.

 To see the yellow-bellied sapsucker suck sap,
to watch the oystercatcher at his catch,
and bluebird, woodcock, dickcissel, blue goose,

Today we’re going to get to work on the details

The two or three times I saw Lil Wayne
hanging out at the Praline Connection
in New Orleans he had a mouth full of bling