Set before me on a plate,
A slice of salmon—
Not farmed, but taken from the sea—
Warm and soft as peaches, set with
Cut red organic boiled and buttered
Potatoes.
Set before me by the one
Who made the food a meal the way
She made the man a husband,
Made the husband father and
The three of us a family.

I will fork the potato first—
Something from the earth must pull me to it—
But first we close our eyes and ask
What brought this food to us.
The labors. The sea life, taken.
Just asking it in silence,
Just caring for her labors in this
Kitchen
These last dark afternoon hours
While we were off with other things,
Just knowing this one thing is grace.

To be so cool forty years later
Allen Murphy still reveres
the way you said "shit,"
not "shoot" with a bite,
not some hapless whine about fate,
but "shit" like a whip crack
aimed so precisely
from your night club chair
only Allen Murphy heard it,
Allen a hayseed in Cleveland at 19,
come to hear your Quintet with his dad,
thinking maybe on his way to the Men's Room
he'll slide by your table. "Shit,"
said so well Allen Murphy pops out
of my living room chair forty years later
to reenact every nervous step,
closer and closer,
until you gave the word.
Miles, you fucker, you genius,
you taught Allen Murphy how to say "shit."
Now he rules every inch of the room.

Through muggy August on searing streets
My father moved
His things from his third-floor home.
Into musky freight elevators.
Through ground-level doors.
Down to the granite street.

The floors I toddled on will be refinished
To host glittering dinner parties.
Walls that held paintings
Will be demolished to make room
For clever furniture.

The money's seeping its way down,
Soaking everything
In a friendly fog of comfort.

This fall, cobblestones
Will be ripped from the streets.

Stillness has been written of before
Zen haiku and New England snow
but tonight the butterknife is sleeping
A cracked walnut
remembers the lullabies it sang
And the glass of water
keeps drinking each thought which comes to be
And I keep thinking
of what I read in the Upanishads:
"take perfect from perfect
the remainder is perfect
may peace and peace and peace
be everywhere"

by this pond
where old shoes tumbled near the bottom and
miniature vessels went to pieces among the duckweed
(it is here that a drowned man kept his home)
they laughed in their sodden mittens,
tossing slush against the kissing box—
within
my glasses were crooked but clear;
I could hear the bayberry drip above me.

Initially the needle is put on the beginning of the record, it plays a song; before the song ends the needle is lifted and placed on the record again at the beginning and it plays a different song; each time the needle is lifted and placed at the beginning of the recording, a different song is heard; if you want to hear the entire song the needle is on...the trick is not to lift the needle. The same holds true for a book with ever-shifting contents...open it...but do not turn the pages...if you are far steadier when things do not move...movement complements if it is repeated in the same disorder...which of course becomes the order...it is the book within the book I like to read.

He Reads French Philosophy Beside the bed a copy of Of Grammatology because he knows it's so passé it'll soon be back in vogue. He Frequents Galleries Large swathes of empty floorspace he knows equal the expectation of large crowds and revenues. He Shops Online Returning is an art a refining of desire into byte-sized obituaries. He Drinks Dark Coffee Damn the birds and those who protect them; he just wants smooth taste. He Dines Out Often Waste not want, he tells his friends; you never know what hunger may feed you.

He Wears Fine Clothes Brother to coolness is fear covering him in the icy cloak of never enough. He Polishes His Shoes Reflection is a dangerous thing a stiletto buried deep within the sole. He Sends TXT MSG Striving towards connectivity made easier by there being so little substance to send. He Drives Fast, He Drives Big Acceleration is of the essence the unlayering of the past to escape from the [future] will. He Eats Foie Gras Stuffing himself with what's been force-fed others reminds him of who's on top.

He Works Late Nights Accumulation prefigures the gradual winding down. He Watches Porn Never the thrill but its deadening thrusting aside the requisite subjugation. He Follows Extreme Sports Striving for limits as he knows no circumspection. He Hates Small Dogs Whatever can't kill you isn't worth a kick. He Donates His Time In the form of checks balanced with a healthy dose of self-loathing.