The beginning was hills, moss-covered stones,
October flowers. I climbed all day,
those damp beginnings. I felt

The restless pass the night hours in company
  forever about in the town; though many
  at half past three admit to being lonely.

I can hear you in the bathroom: rinsing, splashing, steaming;
Three different kinds of sound slurred, the elements
Confounded by your actions. (Across the airshaft,

One red-winged blackbird can’t begin
Without the other, hidden in the cedars.
Listen, listen, listen,
For he struts between

The masts are mostly gone, Walt. Pleasure-sailors
ply the harbor, piloting fiberglass forty-footers
down from the North Shore, one at the wheel,

The Seagull was a failure, the burlesque crowd began to shout
   “Intellectual rot!” And then, before dinner at the
   Hermitage

Sluice me, stop my breath—still my 
  life to this, my fist 
taut, a hand of fingers feeds my 

Will it rain? The rain says it will
as thunder pools in every vowel,

Yes, my Captain, I was there.
I was the one punching the buttons of the radio

until the right commercial came on

I turned forty the year I wrote it
  all down, every bit
  I could remember: