Shrouded in a haze of personality like a perfume.

As one who thinks of poetry
As a way of talking to yourself,
I probably do too much explaining,
For that’s what talking to yourself is like:
The things you can’t explain to anyone
Are suddenly made clear to no one, as though
Nobody mattered but yourself. And it’s the same

Photo: sitting by the cabin on Lake Au Train
We rented every summer, reading John Cheever,

The stance is one of supplication, but to whom?
Time pours into the present, while a greater,
Vaguer presence menaces the borders of that country

We change to keep all else the same

Crows fill the tree, get up
one by one, heavy, together

Caught here in your limestone cave,
lost in a limbo of slow water torture,
for you, each day is night always.

A tallow worked into a knot
of rawhide, with a ball of waxy light
tied to a stick, the boy

You huddle into a shield or breastplate,
a whisper in the dark summoning your kin 
one by one along the frontier. In your kingdom,

As if my mind's double-jointed
Sometimes, I have wanted
To bow my head & kiss

Weeks on my back, counting
stars not up there, cutting quick
close corners in the wheelchair

Ralph kept moving true as oil,
questions silent in my mouth
after hearing a ragged sound