We trapped him—
the dignified male
with the graceful neck—

The cracked creekbed sang with heat that afternoon.
My eyes scoured the brush for shed snakeskin
When far off the dazed whistle of a train

        After the snow, after carved corpses
exposed the icy survival of the last 
     Donner Party members, the Belgian

On rocky Delos, no births or deaths were allowed
to desecrate the spirits of the stones—
but how did the keepers tell the dying

                If you were fired and were free to go
                  From Appalachia to
                  The Apennines, would you

It is hard not to look down from these heights
on the unfeeling flatlands
of southeast Hagerstown, its minor-league

A goateed sage 
chews salvia against toothache 
salivates as the new kitchen maid frosts a cake

 Like everything else they are
like nothing else—

intricate and simple:

sweetly going with death; away from
me; plastic bag extending into infinity

But in the stippled, rose velvet
Buds of staghorn sumac, in rust-
  Bright veins of briar,