metal, but with

none of the chill.

It’s hard to explain.

REPULSIVE THEORY

Little has been made

of the soft skirting action

of magnets reversed,

while much has been

made of attraction.

But is it not this pillowy

principle of repulsion

that produces the

doily edges of oceans

or the arabesques of thought?

And do these cutout coasts

and in-curved rhetorical beaches

not baffle the onslaught

of the sea or objectionable people

and give private life

what small protection it’s got?

Praise then the oiled motions

of avoidance, the pearly

convolutions of all that

slides off or takes a

wide berth; praise every

eddying vacancy of Earth,

all the dimpled depths

of pooling space, the whole

swirl set up by fending off—

extending far beyond the personal,

I’m convinced—

immense and good

in a cosmological sense:

unpressing us against

each other, lending

the necessary never

to never-ending.

BLUE CHINA DOORKNOB

I was haunted by the image of a blue china doorknob.
I never used the doorknob, or knew what it meant,
yet somehow it started the current of images.

—Robert Lowell

Rooms may be

using us. We

may be the agents

of doorknobs’

purposes, obeying

imperatives china

dreams up or

pacing dimensions

determined by

cabinets. And if

we’re their instruments—

the valves of their

furious trumpets,

conscripted but

ignorant of it—

the strange, unaccountable

things we betray

were never our secrets

anyway.

SALVAGE

The wreck

is a fact.

The worst

has happened.

The salvage trucks

back in and

the salvage men

begin to sort

and stack,

whistling as

they work.

Thanks be

to God—again—

for extractable elements

which are not

carriers of pain,

for this periodic

table at which

the self-taught

salvagers disassemble

the unthinkable

to the unthought.

ALMOST WITHOUT SURFACE

Sometimes before

going to sleep a person

senses the give

behind the last given,

almost physically,

like the strain

of plush against

a skin.

The person imagines

a fig or peach,

perhaps a woman or

a deep constellation:

some fathomless

fruit.

But we are each

that, while we live,

however much

we resist: almost

without surface, barely

contained,

but crazy

as clouds compounding

each other, refusing

to rain.

THE LIGHT OF INTERIORS

The light of interiors

is the admixture

of who knows how many

doors ajar, windows

casually curtained,

unblinded or opened,

oculi set into ceilings,

wells, ports, shafts,

loose fits, leaks,

and other breaches

of surface. But, in

any case, the light,

once in, bounces

toward the interior,

glancing off glassy

enamels and polishes,

softened by the scuffed

and often-handled, muffled

in carpet and toweling,

buffeted down hallways,

baffled equally

by the scatter and order

of love and failure

to an ideal and now

sourceless texture which,

when mixed with silence,

makes of a simple

table with flowers

an island.

THINGS SHOULDN’T BE SO HARD

A life should leave

deep tracks:

ruts where she

went out and back

to get the mail

or move the hose

around the yard;