May you sleep the most famous sleep: the night kind, one-third-of-your-whole-life-like, and if you panic in the peace, you are not dying. Breathing but not doing is not dying. 

The economical ikebana
of the lesser octopus
is disarming,

Red stripes around my ankles, tight
as sisters. We are maybe fourteen, priceless 
with gooseflesh.

The round white knob
on the dresser drawer—

Oh the baby cries. He howls and claws 
like a wrongly minor red wolf 
who doesn’t know his mother.    

Excluding genitalia,
What is a man?
A little boy all grown-up. A reverse neverland.

Animals aren’t afraid the way we are. They don’t imagine danger. If danger comes, an animal becomes more alive, using its stored-up more-animal-self reserves. If the danger is fatal, it becomes the most alive it’s ever been, using up its entire being in those last moments. 

You never understood me until you watched me wash the inside of the well, with clean well water and invisible soap that dissolves the dirt and then clumps up and floats on the surface, suddenly iridescent. 

Noticing now how trees in twilight gather 
closer, more in command than you know them to be, 
snags the eye on advancing time foreshortened, 

“Is it raining there?”
your voice on the phone
wondered for no reason