The rounds of seasons, this year’s style or that
Year’s loss; core sample of eternity.

We had a candle ready and watched the lightning
Shred up from the landing field in the valley

Snoozes may bowl a dream or two, but no strikes. I prefer
the sensual contours of the bridge off there—
how like your thigh. But after all it’s only a bridge

Your prospects widen and hum through Missouri
toward Colorado, farm after farm, like a C-Major chord.

I stock the sky’s night waters with dim barge-loads of turquoise
before lofting them southerly, just under the moon.

All this happened when I was young:

I stopped knowing anybody. I waited for somebody to know me. I knew most of my strangers in depth; acquaintanceship stifled this; strangeness had to be the bond. Maybe I was too small to be seen. 

She was born Sarah Gossett Ballenger—
Sarah our mother's proper name, Gossett our mother's
family name, Ballenger the name of her father.

Sometimes in the evening I see
coming toward me, from a distance,
a kind of blossom: huge, blue, nodding

In fact, my hand is not a hand
but a whole house, and there is no time
but a thick, reluctant river

How strange to see their faces start to worry
Into ours, and after all those years
We spent pretending we had made a life