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

White had a claim upon my heart the winter
storms left snow hip-deep on Truro’s arm

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

his coat is fire, and I, who dress
     my fear to talk it down, want to shelter

A thin gold catch like a bee’s stinger—
    but there are no bees in winter—
lost from a necklace of honey-colored beads,

Before, it was the wind
and the idea of disorder.
And now it is the sea in the kitchen;

It’s always the same:
the perfect vellum messages of sympathy from The Best
                          Magazines,
the snippets of bright paper scrawled “Sorry”—

Leo where are you now?
Playing at some two-bit carnival in Altoona?
Married to your fat pink lady from the Bowery?