This is the 5th time for me to be writing to you
& I promise it is the last.
I know your reading this Joyce Carol

“I feel like such a… shit.
I rescued this little lost terrier
on Broadway and 90th, mangy little thing

Where the gale winds blew they crouched low
where too much horizon leered they fashioned a circle
and drew its boundaries tight

Of course the face is real
of course it isn’t a private fantasy
we see it as clearly as you do

You died on Wednesday. On Friday
I’m hauled by limousine to be photographed
for a magazine feature, Charles Street

Here is the wide veranda striped in sunshine
and here, beside the house, those bushes heavy
with tiny white clustered berries said

After the first death there is a shrinking.

Miracles to fit in a spoon.

The sun rolling crazy and free as the wheel of an old baby buggy.

So much depends
upon
forgetting much

It nudges you from your shallow sleep,
it whispers love-mockeries.

Beyond our seed-littered pond a small forest of bamboo grows wild.
Hear the wind-rustling like shaken paper? Bamboo.