I can still hear her.
She hobbles downstairs to the kitchen.
She is swearing at the dishes.

It’s Saturday afternoon at the edge of the world.
White pages lift in the wind and fall.
Dust threads, cut loose from the heart, float up and fall.

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

In the mornings we’re in the dark;
even at the end of June
the zucchini keep on the sill.

Do you still know these early leaves, trans-
lucent, shining, spreading on their branches
like green flames?

He sits before me now, reptilian, cold,
Worn skeletal with sorrow for his child.
He would have lied to her, were he not old

I am your ancestor. You know next-to-nothing
about me.
There is no reason for you to imagine
the rooms I occupied or my heavy hair.

I bike not just to get places but to get off the ground:
you don’t have to be going somewhere to be somewhere,
going.

The poem is a self-portrait
                                                                      always, no matter what mask
You take off and put back on.

I’m winding down. The daylight is winding down.
                                Only the night is wound up tight.
And ticking with unpaused breath.