after he left me, that reconciled me

to myself, was you, Carolyn,

who could see me as I was, and see me as true enough—

breasts that pressed against other breasts it was you!

2

P.S., I also like the physical

body of your book—wide-opened, face-entered,

it smells like the clean inside of a tree. When I was

stood in the corner, I would smell the corner,

the hard, right

angle of it,

coming to odor grips with the Calvinists

who’d made me. Stucco, Republican adobe,

equilateral, cold—I was always

cold in Northern California,

and I didn’t know I felt anger. Half

a century later, my rage rose up as if

out of a New Hampshire floor, taking the

power of my knees, as I said to Carl,

“I do not agree with you.” And as I

stroke your book, Carolyn,

it warms to my touch—not those newfangled

rubberized boards, but a solid, smooth

cardboard cover. We walked, in Berkeley, till we

stood under

the copper beech

in what had been my mother’s garden,

and over my shoulder you saw the neighbor’s

face open and light up as mine did when I

turned. Cara, I’m so glad I could present you to

Elena e Elio—“una grande poeta

americana di Arkansas!”

My mother, who seemed to feel virtuous as Virgil,

had showed me what life could be, if you lacked

what, the love of a mother, which my mother

herself had lacked. I showed you her beech,

her redwood, her sequoia, her espaliered pear, and you had—

what can I call them—the visionary balls,

cojones de madre, to love me. I feel as if

I owe you my life. If you—our best, in your

fresh, saltwater wit—could stand me,

how bad could I be? Never to have not

been with thee. Never not those moments.

PART TWO

When They Say You Have Maybe Three Months Left

In my sleep, I dreamed that I came to your grave—

and what lay between us? The beautiful uncut

hair of the grass, and topsoil like the rich

dirt in which you buried our sheets

after I left you—our DNA—near where

you later buried your golden dog.

Also between us the new ceiling

of plain pine, and the linen garment

your fresh-washed unbreathing body had been clothed in,

and the earthen chamber music of wild,

underworld, spiral creatures,

and your tissue I have loved, and within it the ancient

primordial man of your skeleton.

Narwhal tusk, elephant ivory,

icon of your narrow-hipped male power

I rode, rowing in eden. But

it was no dream, I lay broad waking,

and you have not died yet. I can read this to you

in a week, in front of the woodstove,

the flames curving up to points and disappearing,

or beside the pond, the water rippling,

ovals of hemlock and beech changing places in it.

Sometimes you fall asleep as I’m talking to you.

And you’ve said: I want you to be reading me a poem when I die.