The wide sweep of today.
Books, flowers, and poetry. Woolgathering and trees.
The wood garden is fervor, a blaze of primula and anemone.
The poplar is passion, viola-resonant, my vibrating footfall.

Busy Lizzie. Wink and blink. Touch-me-not. Impatiens, as ever, a virtue my
dear! Enough of this love your perennials and they will love you back threefold
and several seasons. If you don’t like it, pull it out!

Midges and tetchiness.
A constantly muddy mood.

In my impatience for mail it strikes me that the perianth is a floral envelope
—a cloak concealing the reproductive organs . . .

Peak gust and west of July.

The big-voice flashers.
Wings of metal and night.

“Work shall set you free:” a sensible sentiment:
Marx would agree: Freud would give his assent:
Yet take those words and put them on a sign

I walk into the men’s room at LaGuardia Airport
And the guy standing next to me zipping his fly
Has been dead for thirteen years. I know because
He was one of my professors in graduate school.

Sir Winston Churchill advised against suicide
“Especially when you may live to regret it.”
After an endless faculty meeting at Princeton,

Unable to distinguish between flying and falling
With a feeling of splendid contempt and with a strange loving longing 
In my eyes, I look up at the helicopter that was lately  my home 

No gentle way of breaking the news: you turn on the TV 
And see the rocket’s red glare: the capsule explodes, 
The astronauts tumble down, and the anchorpeople