Child with a chip of mirror in his eye
Saw the world ugly, fled to plains of ice
Where beauty was the Snow Queen’s promises,

Long ago I found a seed,
And kept it in a glass of water,
And half forgot my dim intent

Piece by piece I seem
to re-enter the world: I first began

a small, fixed dot, I still can see

I sit at a table of actors, who show us all
how incredible the corn chowder tastes to them,
or how aghast they were backstage last night.

Their dream decelerates our spinning planet
one millimeter-per-second per century
until they have matched velocity with us

There is less and less difference
between your shadow
and the shadow inside you

I have lost my bachelorhood to hands I’ve made
grasp the fabric of my most famous couch.

The mosquitoes love it. So do the children who pull on their
   mothers’ skins
to indicate that there’s a naked man outside. So there will

They return in desirable colors of the season,
whether casually or stupidly, to simplify the garden
of its sweetest shoots and tips, though I have set out

The bread and the candle: pale leftovers
         from the last milling, the last box of singular suns.