I sit by the window all morning
watching the planes make final approaches.
Each of them gathers and steadies itself

My mother comes back from a trip downtown to the dimestore. She has brought me a surprise. It is still in her purse.

First the Chickadees take
their share, then fly
to the bittersweet vine,

Beyond the pond where dragonflies 
Lie bedded down among the reeds 
And bullfrogs clock the racing days 

Once to wake proud in a burst of sunlight
as bearing news of real significance,
to risk cold coffee for this native hour

It is dark now.
Nets of snow 
tumble about us. 

Genghis Khan me, you midnight plantation!
Dark blue birch trees, sound in my ear!
Zarathuse me, you twilight horizons!

Charles Lindbergh never danced with Ginger Rogers.
He wasn’t a comedian even though he was
from Detroit. You’d see him

Biggest fish I will ever see,
men caught you
and hung your death

      It's a morning of snow and crows storming the bare treetops
As if they invade the eves of a burned-out cathedral.
Where are the children? A ludicrous posture of mourning