Loss of names is a kind of leakage
but there is another: the actual scale

She dallies now in plots
but feels a longing for dispersal

Thunder blooms unevenly in unknowable places,
breaking distances into startling new chambers

From where I stood on the bridge
I could see the moon, flapping on water, unable to escape.

Roll me in protective layers
of yourself, wool scarves.
Take me out in the snow.

City air makes a man free 
To cut his own throat or that
Of his neighbor across the way.

Love in a maze destroyed his force
Regretting free and sunny days.
He mastered compass, chart and course

But if, after so many droning days, 
You try to imagine a quiet country 
Under the soft crush of the tide, 

On the hottest day of the year I rode the mail
To Waterloo Strand and Seaside Macedon
Where, tanned like Egyptians in their Louis-Quatorze

Cold, cold … 
In the end it began to snow 
Mercifully, like bandages