finally the hour has come
it is time for the long journey
I say to my wife and child a last farewell

and click the blue button
my face appears across from my face
it is the day we will virtually discuss

the unpredictable resolutions I am sure
obscurely will decide my fate
the ostensible chair begins to speak

thank you for your electrons
I hope you are well in these days   
or at least surviving

Right now in the rest area it’s sunny and cold. Someone 
is taking a picture of the vending machine. I have 
never been sad for appropriate reasons.

Yesterday I kicked a tree
a walnut fell in a grave
nobody got hurt

it’s June
the February
of summer

your ear pressed to the asphalt
listening for further instructions

No one but lovers and children tell their dreams:
not fish, nearer fowl, where does that leave me—
bantam in the barnyard, pecking for mash.

It was a hot day in June.
Inside the aquarium it was so cool
after the bright light outside that

Rain of the months and years we had 
known each other pressed in, printing 
the new car as we left the wedding. 

We look at the map. When we arrive in France from King’s Cross the fields are striated with barbed wire and it is raining.

Japanese Poems:

Between the bent boughs  
of the splayed sumac, the silver
owl rests his head

The father of two silver medal figure skaters
said, “When they were eight and ten, I built a rink, twenty
by forty in the yard, without a fence. There was nothing