The bed is ready

but no rain yet.

GREEN HILLS

Their green flanks

and swells are not

flesh in any sense

matching ours,

we tell ourselves.

Nor their green

breast nor their

green shoulder nor

the languor of their

rolling over.

RUBBING LAMPS

Things besides

Aladdin’s and

the golden cave

fish’s lamps

grant wishes.

In fact,

most lamps

aren’t lamp-

shaped and

happen by

accident: an

ordinary knob

goes lambent

as you twist

or a cloth turns

to silver mesh

against a dish—

something

so odd and

filled with promise

for a minute

that you spend

your only wish

wishing someone else

could see it.

TENDERNESS AND ROT

Tenderness and rot

share a border.

And rot is an

aggressive neighbor

whose iridescence

keeps creeping over.

No lessons

can be drawn

from this however.

One is not

two countries.

One is not meat

corrupting.

It is important

to stay sweet

and loving.

TAR BABIES

Tar babies are

not the children

of tar people.

It is far worse.

The tar baby occurs

spontaneously

nor do we adhere

at first. There is

an especially

unperverse

attractiveness

to the tar baby—

although currently

she is a little sick.

When you start

to help her

is when she

starts to stick.

TIRED BLOOD

Well, not tired

so much as freighted.

As though foreign objects

had invaded.

As though tiny offices

had dumped

their metal furniture

among the glossy lozenges

and platelets—

chairs that stick together,

painful cabinets.

THEFT

The egg-sucking fox

licks his copper chops.

The shell cups

lie scattered from

the orange debauch.

It is honest

straightforward theft—

unlike whatever

cruel thing

steals thought

the full weight left

and the locked room

still locked.

IDEAL AUDIENCE

Not scattered legions,

not a dozen from

a single region

for whom accent

matters, not a seven-

member coven,

not five shirttail

cousins; just

one free citizen—

maybe not alive

now even—who

will know with

exquisite gloom

that only we two

ever found this room.

CAPS

People should be

open on top like a cup.

A piece of bread

should be able to sop

some of us up.

We should be milk-like

or like wine. We should

not have to be trying

to get our caps off all the time.

The storybook boy

attempts the simple gesture

of baring his head

for his emperor,

but another hat has appeared.

This happens over and over.

Who does not share

his despair of simplicity,

of acting clearly and with dignity?

And what pleasure can we find

in the caps, brightly feathered

and infinitely various,

that pile up so high they bury us?

THIN

How anything

is known

is so thin—

a skin of ice

over a pond

only birds might

confidently walk

upon. A bird’s

worth of weight

or one bird-weight

of Wordsworth.

STARDUST

Stardust is

the hardest thing

to hold out for.

You must

make of yourself

a perfect plane—

something still

upon which

something settles—

something like

sugar grains on

something like