She'll take the keys
without discussion; he'll be content,
unquestioning in the passenger seat.

The first mapmaker, while clearly lacking
the global view, was persuaded nonetheless
by elongated blots approximating where he'd been.

She'll navigate little-known landscapes, accelerate
past exit ramps, breathe easily, exhale
minor mysteries, drive on.

She'll drive on, passing
roadside signs, indecipherable
and that's okay.

Early cartographers were defeated by perspective;
we map madly now, measuring continents and
gardens and galaxies and the shortfalls of the soul.
But for all of that and science, who can fix a point
and say, "I am there or was or will be?"

She'll take the keys,
without discussion.

putting it all back together
say I sent you dozens of roses
deep red American Beauties emanating fragrance
so you and all the sisters
can pluck all the petals
one by one, in fits of pique
each an enchanted lamentation
love, love knot
placed in the pool of your tears
at least there would be
rose water
the antediluvian dampness our lips
i cut myself dreaming

I am on a westbound train, sitting at a white tableclothed table
playing casino with my cloned son Robert.
Robert's not too bright, but he's goodhearted, or wants to be.
He is beating me more often than not at this game I've taught him,
which my father (of whom, unfortunately, I'm no clone) taught me.
I think we are in Oklahoma, or maybe New Mexico—one of those
gorgeous western states speeding past us as we play our cards.
I would ask Robert where we are, only I know he wouldn't know if I don't.
We are on our way to California, where a man and his clone may
feel reasonably secure. I once
had a premonition I would die there; that was in 1965. It
hardly matters now.

The morning Bobby Bell left my house, the geometry of line on the sidewalks changed
texture to a river of skin cells under a platform microscope.

Sometime you want to push back memory until you remember the only way you know,
the sun an egg yolk, dried grass taking on its coloring, the lawn running egg
drippings on a greased cast iron pan.

He was my best friend and then he wasn't. I stood there, waiting, watching him go.

I can see my shadow cross the shadow of a tree, then the shadow of a parked car, then the shadow of an elderly couple walking down the sidewalk holding hands. They knew
my name.

say you served me plates of tapenades
ripened Tuscan balsamics disseminating radiance
then me and all of mine
could dip full our fingers
two by two, to touch and seek
every embarrassed dedication
need, need not
tossed onto the deck of my fears
the most we might see
pottery shards
the ancient ceramics our hearts

I dreamt away the afternoon
Leveled on a beach chair with
That book you sent me yesterday.
It just killed me.

That Robert guy,
The one who loved so much,
He took up every page
With thoughts of Iris
This Iris, who would not love him back.

It reminded me of me.
I used to love a girl
Who had long legs.
I watched her all the time
Across the street.

It was always Summer,
Like now,
And she was always there
In front, before the house
With older boys.

I watched from up above,
Behind the blinds,
While mother
Vacuumed or did some wash
And dad played chess by mail.

Days went by
When all I did was stare
At her, at them,
The games they played
With water, smoking.

It didn't go on that long.
You see, we had to move again
From Brooklyn
When the police came
And took it all away.

a rose is a dog
is a pig is a rose
is a rose is a tree
is a goat is a car
is a rose is a rose
is a skunk is a golf club
is a manic episode is a rose
is another tree is a rose
is a rose is a rose is a rose

Long before he was
A caricature selling cars with Washington,
Deconstructed by historians,
A pensive marble on the Mall
Or an icon on classroom walls,
The savior of the union, the great emancipator,
The original man in black
Was tired and hoping to feel
A stirring beneath the wrinkled shell
Buckling under his clothes,
And perhaps to loosen the mask his face,
Destined for pennies and five-dollar bills
Had become,
Furrowed like a winter road.
After the War,
Decisions and proclamations,
Speeches formed on trains,
Telegraph messages
Anticipated and unwanted,
The empty solace of home.
After tramping through mud,
Minnie ball carnage
Running red,
Sulfurous air,
Stifling Potomac heat and
Political intrigue
With its incessant mosquito drone.
After a winter long on
Dark drafty rooms,
Hollow boot sounds on wood,
Derisive laughter,
And in smoky halls
The hushed contemplations of
Conspiracy,
Honest Abe went to the theater
And found his way home.

we grow asymmetrical—
strength in one eye
and the opposite leg,
and our lives gyre
slowly at first—
then like old nations
we pull in our arms
and spin thin strings of fire.

Assurance that we will arrive safely
through this portal,
despite the siren calls of calculated risks .

Actuaries be damned!
that we may live to see the demise
of our grandchildren's grandchildren.

The limb that can be spared, the lump benign,
as we ponder the wonder
of divine intervention.

That we might never take for granted
the probability of being struck by
murderous flows of falling blue ice.

Each native thing, it seemed, on my uncle's ranch
grew thorns—mesquite, cacti, goathead stickers.
Out back, beyond the barbed wire
that circled the house, a tiny stream
trickled from puddle to puddle,
belabored by the sun and incessant wind,
escaping finally into the Palo Duro Canyon.
Its bed was barely three feet wide,
easily vaulted by children seeking arrowheads,
and its scant offering ignored by the cattle
as they plodded toward the windmill
with its tank of tepid water.
One year, my uncle told me,
when even the sparse annual rainfall did not come,
the stream failed completely, and
—who would have thought it?—
he found fish in there, little fish
all dead and dried up.
Whoever dreamed they could live in there?

How is it with you, my poems?

Over there a wolf howls
Knowing