“I had hoped to satisfy my love for her a little by giving her a bouquet; it was a complete waste of time. Such a thing is possible only through literature or copulation. I write this not because it is new to me, but because perhaps it is a good thing to put warnings frequently into writing.”

I do not move through time. I move
through rain. When rain falls
straight down on mossy brick walks

And the house became the spring
night—the hallway a vernal hallway

But it’s also how the noisy
crow enlarges the territory

We think they go well together—the translucent
vanilla orchid, the slipper orchid, the ginger
fragrances of the fiddle leaf, the swollen,

Across my work yard the bones lie,
a rubble in crests and waves, piled
white, grooved brown, ocean to ocean—

Some part of every living crearure
is always trembling, a curious
constancy in the wavering rims

For the orange, saucer-eyed
lemurs indri of the family sifaka,
it is the perfect forest of the hot,

Smell the lilies and the columbine,
intoxicating rose, seductive lily-
of-the-valley, come smell! Can’t they die?

The things between me 
and time: 
My daily forgetfulnesses.