The high elms provide
A pillared avenue
Where only birds parade,

Boyhood, a dangling carrot. I stare at you
and experience the embarrassment of riches. 

Propped up on one elbow,
leaning his cheek on his hand,
he looks at her as she sleeps,

Waking every day the frost reasserts itself. Its relentlessness a tedium, a closure. The earth must have looked more familiar when all was water.

I'm not convinced that woman wanted him
ever to come back home. She had her business
in tapestries, those three-hour meals with men,

My mind is mush. Three days without a thought
but how to tell them I can't eat their corn
again, nor smoke that pipe that tastes like silt,

Our forest, our ocean, it stretched westward from the edge
of town. Knee-high at fireworks time, taller by August
than any child. Flat as a bed the prairie, spread quilt

During the screened-porch dinner of corn on the cob,
pork chops, tomatoes like red meat, warm and bleeding,
I felt the first stirring. The air moved, cracked the damp

A round white troll with a black, greasy
heart shuddered and hummed “Diogenes,
Diogenes,” while it sloshed the wash.

First, go to Hell—I mean, seek out the Halls
                of Hades and his consort,
Persephone the Dread. Here’s what you’ll need: