Dear Beings, I Can Feel Your Hands

small boat harbor—

On Tuesday, meteor


and then on


Thursday, riptides. Spouting


Horn—What am I? To be


the mast of such great admiral—


Sit down. Dear beings, I am afraid


I have lost my ruthlessness and cunning


along with a bay horse and turtledove. There


are flowers stuck to the ceiling. Seriously.


What have I near the water? My family


moves around me. I have decided


nothing (scares me). I look out across the water


and a spindly black spider


turns out to be a tide crab. Little sister


saying that’s a moth’s wing—up close


Set waves, tide


more like a feeling—my mother saying     look


at how many people died while we were away—


Thin series of blurs


like I was never there at all


Like the other day I heard a woman


talking to her friend at the bar     I feel


like I’m not good enough. I’ll never make money


again, never fall in love. I don’t know


where to go when the doors close—


I can’t just go out and buy a wheat-colored soul


write a sadder poem—startled


by windows curved up in the shape of


fins. Up and behind my head


the shadows on the table spin


for us. We are in love—if I could


spend my life  beneath palm fronds


into which walk     little birds and saunterers


Clouds wrapped around iceplants     if I could only


find one of the letters to God


in the street—I am still new to town


The kids on the lawn go around


the light. I don’t get it. The first word


I hear on my birthday


is windowbox—charming of treetops


and songs on the radio


calm me down. Disarmed


but hopeful—thank you


I look up and

cathedral,
          spotlight

not having to

          imagine beautiful rooftops

—I find myself in that


                         §


And the feeling of girls laughing downstairs—


lucky enough just to scan the flights of birds


stand under bleachers     in the snow


blurting out kisses—like a man


the cards kept urging forward


the world so rare it ripples


in the photos I develop, I tell the clerk     go somewhere


and make yourself happy. All the lights in the ceiling


say flood. Make me happy—feeling of.   I say


a feeling left of


windblown. I want to live


in a world where rooftop tennis courts


covered in confectioners snow stadium lights


on all the south-facing windows—world where


gates ajar     rend my prayer


where
                  wren—

Blackout

Night over asphalt—passages in the snow—night over asphalt
just wanted to be a host—a place for brightness to pass over
a million different animals all crashing into a kitchen and breaking
nothing—keep thinking: God moves to the ends of our prepositions
like an open shirt—suddenly it’s all leaky doors and thunderstorms
like forgetting something—it’s all green—and then a blackout
everyone in streets

§

          the wind that hit
those grasses
          was an animal. I mean you
can see it
          but only in patches. Only
by the yellow light
          its teeth flashes off
I was driving downtown
          when what I thought
was chandeliers
          was sky actually
teethed on two sides
          by exposure to buildings and trees
a new kind of world—its name

                       I believe you and it really is glorious—really

          something else
Not the real but stuck to it
          Not full, shot through with
light—if I ever stop thinking
          this is a wilderness
pepsi can forest
          in the tall rusty bushes
growing through steel dark
          bleachers, echo of
somebody else’s for-rent
          whisper on the phone—if I ever
wanted to be this carousel
          of night sounds—all I can think of
I want to be an extra pair
          of movie-set lights
I was standing in flowers
          inverted by bell shapes
and suddenly everything’s done
          so forwardly—