by her necklace of bites, her wolfish

eating habits. How greedily

she ate: the sad result, her mother said,

of living too long alone. You’re little

better than that dog, her mother scolded her,

at which point she rose from the table,

tossed her food to the floor,

and got down on all fours to eat it.

The Olive Tree at Vouves

The Olive Tree at Vouves

His shoots will sprout and his beauty will be unto the

olive tree—

Hosea 14:6

To write

about the tree is not

to write about the human, and yet

to see this olive

split in two—or is it

two trees woven

into one—sinuous,

long-backed—is to think

of a man’s thigh

wound around another’s, hip

to hip joined

at the silver bole

of bark that smells

of sun and the dark oils

of scalp and groin, a mouth of water

shared by beings

both apart from and inside of

each other. Once

I saw a man take another

like this among the shadowed

pines outside the museum where

everyone knew

men went. To hide

or not as was their wont

those days in the city when they said

the men were dying and we

should raze the grove to keep

them out. Who knew

what wind, what soil

might carry? Who knows

why I see these men

again here, brief flare

of fear and desire resurrected

in this bark, another life I can have

no knowledge of except

by what the tree

suggests and memory—

sterile, fading—dissolves into.

The olive tree of Vouves

has been alive

two thousand years. Olives,

it seems, do not have

to die: shoots split

the elder’s center, feed

within its roots, taking from it

form, nutrient, light; taking from it

skin and weather until

the thorn crowns shake,

lustrous, indifferent

beside it. But I

am not talking about the human

here: not myth, not lovers,

not even a man

lingering in a grove at night,

waiting for a friend to find

or betray him. Only olives

shivering in their winter

silvers. How solitary

they seem like this, raw-

skinned, taut:

their embrace

so like our own

though I know

it is not.

Driving to Santa Fe

Driving to Santa Fe

Quick swim up

through the headlights: gold eye

a startle in black: green, swift glance

raking mine. A full second

we held each other, gone.

Gone. And how did I know

what to call it? Lynx, the only possible

reply though I’d never seen one. The car

filling with it: moonlight,

piñon: a cat’s acrid smell

of terror. How quickly the gray body

fled, swerving to avoid

my light. And how often

that sight returns to me, shames me

to know how much more this fragment

matters. More than the broad back

of a man I loved. More than the image

of my friend, cancer-struck, curled

beside her toilet. More than my regret