The addition of solitude untrammeled,
one and more and more but always
the inner life astray,

                                1
To each his own hell. Mine was an uninhabited
landscape as far from nature as you can get
without actually leaving the planet, a man-made

Dear Uncle Chris, welcome back to my mind
   after so many years. Forgive me for
         not thinking you up sooner: the coiled-vine

Once upon a time. A six-year-old boy almost might be raising himself
from the waters of sleep, onto a beach made glass as a wave’s sheet pulls taut.
His left arm props his torso, his legs (still sleeping?) trail behind like a seal’s

If they, more petite
   than the mice whose flittings
         have pillaged their robes’ sparkled trim,

The seven-story trees
on the jogger-thronged hill
beyond your back garden

The whale eye of the sun in the thin gray overcast,
walleye of a gray wall of animal
washed ashore

No vertebrate diet of comparable silica
content has been described. Though well defended

Hundreds came to pay tribute and to pick over more
than 22,000 objects: sequined vests, fur coats, goblets,

Radiographs showing fine details of vomer, dentition,
vertebral column, pectoral and pelvic girdles