Swallows wheel their passes at the lake,
Dozens of them; they're after the last mosquitoes,
But never touch the water's iron bulge.
A single skiff trolling near the margin
Proves it's really water after all.

Nothing else moves. The frozen ripples
Stand in relief like brazen clothing
On the statue of an ancient public man.

Boulders rise uselessly at intervals,
Uninhabited, as far as I can tell.

Nothing living breaks the slaty surface,
Though under and over, murderous worlds abound.

He digs a hole in the sand.
He has white feet.
The hole is deep enough to reveal
Clay-like black grains.

He tries to build a pyramid
But it crumbles whenever he pushes.
I tell him he needs to go to
Where the sand is wet.
He says if he moves closer to the water
He'll be farther from me.

I tell him the sand in Montauk is red.
He says he'd like to see it,
Someday.

The tide comes in,
The sky grows gray,
The rain drizzles down.
I take cover but he opens his lips
To catch some drops and says
It tastes like salt.
I try too
And see that he's right.

Everybody needs a table.

For writing the grocery list, tossing down the house keys,
the real mail with the junk mail;
a safety zone between you and that guy
you agreed to meet from the personals,
or you and your life partner when you must speak the unspeakable
and simply make small talk with the unspoken intention
of maintaining some connection.

Think about it.
All of those great books written, meals devoured, wine spilled,
flour sifted, dough rolled, dresses cut, curtains sewn, linens folded,
treaties ratified, blueprints revealed, divorces finalized,
kidneys transplanted, muscles massaged, bills paid, cards dealt,
gifts wrapped—

The table as simple facilitator.
Unbiased, impartial.
A passive participant in both
the menial and the earth shattering.
Never judgmental.
The supportive surface
on which we interact.

I am trying to love the sound of rain, heavy rain, for days.

I am noticing the purple violets in the blue pottery against
the dark blue pines and the blue sky.

I am worrying about everything but knowing nothing matters.

I am trying to remember my mother as she was.

I have memorized lines from movies:
We don't need adjectives because a car is a car.
But is love, love?

I am trying not to regret, not to see every word engraved in stone.

I want to let go, to feel the rope loosening in my hands.

1.
How could we have known?

It was like a secret
against which we were blindfolded,
our ears stuffed with cotton,
wrists bound.  Otherwise,

I would have plunged my fingers
beneath your ribs
and sought their treasure
after the first hello.

2.
Instead, I drew it out in dribbles.
We should have been more selfish
with one another.

I wish
we had flung open
the doors
to our souls
before our first five minutes were over.

I wish
we had given over
our first midnight
to those discussions of fog and poetry
and God and tears
and misery and jealousy:

the firm pirouettes of doubt.

3.
When I write
the words are printed on your bones.

4.
Away:
I long for our midnights,
your cracked voice and angry skin.

I wish
that everybody in the world
was more like you.

He says the two bushes
by my porch are beautiful,
but they are just green

and I want color, like
the whiskers of purple
he calls weeds. The poison

ivy, I agree, can go.
It has skirted the underbelly
of every bush and slithered up

the old cedar. The blue fir,
over three stories high and split
by lightning halfway up,

obscures the river view
but I can't bear to kill
what once refused to die.

Fifteen stumps already have roots
bursting through the grass like
lurking alligators. He says

they will attract termites. I have
so many raspberry bushes I could
make preserves if I could. He bends

on one knee and snatches something
from the ground, opens his palm
revealing a single strawberry

the size of his thumbnail, drops
it into my hand, urges me
to eat. I do not like berries. It bleeds

into my skin in the heat.
I drop it when he turns. I have
Mulberry trees, he says, and I

repeat Mulberry because I like the
sound. Mulberry. He offers
the white berry. I shake

my head. The brittle limbs
of the ancient apple tree,
like the one that hurled its fruit

at Dorothy, still drop green apples,
though when we peek inside
the trunk's gaping hole, it is perfectly

hollow, nothing but bark. And I think
of the people I have known like that.
Ed pulls my gaze to the pears,

tiny and green and over my head. And
the dogwood is sick, some insect
spotting the leaves. And maple saplings

sprout everywhere, even within the boxwood
and roses. More surround the yard,
entrenched to form a mighty wall.

And the ants on the peonies will force
buds to bloom bright and bursting,
heads heavy. Blood red, maroon

and the palest pink roses with thorns
so large they remind me of Christ's crown.
Ed demonstrates deadheading.

I must clip the ends of every wasted
bloom. I do this for days
afterward, but the withered defeat me.

Why do I see you always
at the top of the stairs, clutch-
hand on a tray, this final
staircase? It's

never a dais, a lectern
gripped by impassioned
hands or sonorous-voiced
speaking of the nature of life,

Oh, God, how we have evolved.

Sometimes it's a pop and crackle image
of reel to reel, and a nod and a smile, that
handclasp no one noticed and a voice
"Who is that?" not answered.

Once it was a sax player on
Michigan, once that
secret hand you held, dirt
scribbled, hard scrabbled,

once broken-voiced poetry half-recalled.

All conspire
toward a dim hallway,
and the sigh of burden released.

Here again those stairs.

I'm tired
of poems
that tell of past tales
don't let this be words
instead
it's my head
on your chest