They overlap. Pieced together they make an uneven
panorama, a whole face, a bloc of gray buildings,
and although there are windows, they squint unyieldingly.
They are taped to the steel credenza of my office

ever since the boy, his face laced with scars from the accident
that almost took his life, left them there at our last appointment.
They were of Bulgaria, in a city. There were cars parked askew,
haphazard.  Shot from on high, not aerial, but storeys

above the ground, from some balcony, perhaps, though
what architect would plan such a view? The building
from an era one would as soon forget.  It must have been
happenstance, that the vista took in this sweep of concrete

and tough-eyed windows. He must have stood at a window,
one staring down the other.  The plain on which it stood
a barrenness. Who had a car could leave it. Who didn’t,
too bad for him, for from here to there would take

legs and breath and perhaps a pack of cigarettes, again
if you happened to be lucky.  Look there: in the second
photo moving left to right, a pinpoint of burning. A fire.
“Gypsies,” he told me, he who long ago came home

from Bulgaria. He’d had a gospel there. Good news,
and then an accident. He was in my office to write about it,
to show me and then to talk.  When I called him, I had
to leave a message, the reply to which was a volleying silence.

It was his mistake, to leave them, but I love them: I love
the remnant of a world and of a life.  I love the bare plain
between the cold cells of these apartments and the place
he stood to see them, where he opened his mechanical eye.

His stories I barely remember, but I love the lowering winter,
the broad old cars, the marks that are probably people.
The date in the corner of the far right picture. The fire, lick
of transient light, the smoke of it still somewhere burning.

Facing north, we felt it especially at ten, walking out
with the dog, who all day saw it coming:
I walked in, saw yesterday’s mail and the day before’s

blown on the floor in the pattern of a wind pushing in,
around the propped open door.  I straightened
and ignored what the storm was so plainly telling me:

batten down, find your torches, locate the matches,
set up the candles. Do not sit down until you can make
light in the dark without a switch. Where are your guns?

Find the knives. Have you checked the locks? You head out
with that dog, as if the wind might not lift you
like Dorothy. As if the trees won’t loose their limbs

on you. Are the storm windows fast? Is there water
in your Mason jars? Pile the quilts high,
gather the pack in the back room, huddle for warmth.

Disregard the blossom flying apart. Go ahead,
get sad about the cherries.  Watch the trees split,
the pergola fly into the night. Watch the night.

and in the dark of the afternoon room I fell asleep while the little one paged through the photographs slipped into their sleeves in her book,

and the pictures began to speak:

there were messages caught there, when the captured light made ink made image did its first alchemy,

whole speaking lives that were no more:

she once lived by the sea, there was a desert inland that had a street named after him,

or if not a whole street, then his name was written there in the road beneath the road beneath the road:

on the hill, a dragon’s outline, made from the red dirt of that region by the people who have long since disappeared,

though they whisper beside us, behind us at the cinema, or while we drowse

in darkened rooms, in April, a curtain veiling the sun blazing,

and the trees hold their handsful of blossom

and the tulips cut and stems bending, still, in an envelope of water.

The umbrellas move across the plaza, fold, then collapse into the revolving door.
The rain slides down the glass wall.
I’m sitting inside it, four floors up.
The rain flies, it catches light.

In a picture book, I’m looking at Edward Steichen’s Flatiron Building.
Across the room, there are photographs made of ink unfurling into dragons in water.
In Steichen’s New York, it is damp, perhaps a rainy evening.
The shot looks wet.

I think I am done with the week’s tears.
My love sleeps opposite me, settled into a chair.
It’s the same room where the men and women of this city go when they have nowhere else to go.
They spend a part of each day here, sometimes reading, sometimes arguing volubly among themselves.

I have forgotten my notebook.
Here’s a folded paper upon which to write a few sentences.

Something about the forecast.
Later, when we draw near to the house, we’ll find the street is papered with wet petals from the flowering trees lining either curb.

On the inside, I am raining.

drawn in a black walnut tree, turned
in a glare toward us, as it guards the eggs
of the ruby-throated hummingbird
clutched in their tiny nest.

The walnuts are green, like unripe apples,
like olives.  Though the crow is
extremely shy, he is also cunning and employs
all his ingenuity in counteracting

the evil machinations of his enemies.
There is a purple gleam to the edge of his wing.
His eye is brown and he does not look
like a friend.  The book is enormous—

the size of a slim suitcase, printed
on elephant folio, but it too required
some ingenuity:  the artist himself
burned his early drawings to force himself

to improve.  Once he came home from traveling
to find that rats had eaten two hundred.
He had few friends in the Academy.
In England, the American Woodsman

sold subscriptions and paintings, hawked
animal skins.  Upon sighting a traveler from
afar, the crow beats the points of his wings
jerks his tail once or twice, bows his head

and merrily sounds the joy without knowing,
of course, if there is a gun in the offing,
if the traveler will shoot him for the price.
The crow is omnivorous.  Like the artist,

he is archetypal:  when he sounds his alarm.
When he delights in the eggs of other birds.
When his fellows betake themselves to flight.
Broken-winged. Fond of snakes. Its attachments

not surpassed by those of any other bird.
Nesting upon the precipitous rock. Scarce
upon the coast of Labrador, concealed
as much as possible from the eye of man.

*italicized portions taken from Audubon’s annotation of his drawing “American Crow.”

Woody Allen said, “the heart wants what the heart wants,”

to justify man’s ways to woman. I ask, what wants

do I contain, to justify or otherwise? I want

to ask my husband what dessert he wants,

to know chocolate ice cream, who wants?

To make up my chocolate stash, because when I want

chocolate, sweet as chocolate is I want

it.  Chocolate especially on a rainy day, I want

richest chocolate, a first passion want

to drink 12 oz of chocolate milk then run one 400m lap, want

to be able to spend more time on chocolate issues, want

the depth of my love for chocolate, want

flourless chocolate cake, for instance, really want

a “chocolate” New Orleans, want

spoonfuls of chocolate, my number wants

to make sure it’s chocolate wants

The Mama wants what the Mama wants

First it’s A Few Good Men, which is always on
because it’s just that good, or else it’s an endless
parody of itself, Tom Cruise’s face either a paragon
of vacuousness or vacuousness itself.  This is

the sort of thing that a whole evening of television
watching will bring to the forefront
of consciousness: deep down in places I don’t talk about
at parties, do I want him on that wall?

Our team’s center’s Achilles tendon has snapped,
making our expected run deep into the playoffs
a fantasy, full stop, but we are still watching,
watching while a fourteen point lead dwindles

to two, then none, watching us, undermanned,
play gallantly on.  Truth be told, sometimes
I would watch like this just because it was Monday,
and Monday is a night of good shows,

but tonight I am ignoring dread and sorrow both.
We break it up with a walk in the cool night.
We come back to watch for the second time
the finale of our legal thriller.  The lawyer is a bad mother.

She is on a pier, looking out at the water
trying to handle the truth.  We’re down by one.
Five minutes left. She asks herself, was it worth it?
I watch and watch. The game goes on. It’s time to sleep.

Profession

for my youngest child

Once more, I apologize for everything,
since it’s that time of year again
when I am found wanting.  I failed at love and,
on the other hand, apparently loved you
too much.  In the wrong proportions, anyway.
I know this.  There was a time I kept looking
for the sky, spinning, starry or sunny
or leafy, failing to stay steady when it was
steadiness that was called for. Not even
as a child could I make things stay still.

I know it won’t make things better
if I say it was all my fault. You want a catechism.
Now would be a good time to say I am sorry
that I cannot recount my faith in the requisite articles,
but I will give you the ones I have:  I believe

in more than one thing.  I love God and
I love the idea of God.  I believe in mercy
but cannot locate the merciful for myself.

If you want to know, I have never forgiven
myself, either, for my unbelief or for my failures,
which makes this ritual of ours
a little ironic. But I do believe in something,
and straightforwardly, like the time
in the cathedral when I glimpsed
my heart held in sacred hands.  Once I learned
how to testify what I didn’t really know,

although, darling, I have pictures of you
that I look at over and over, holy cards,
pictures of you running, on fields
with a ball at your feet, on tracks, and I
always believed in you, I believed
that you would win, that you would
break the tape, I knew
that you would score that goal.

the sweaterless afternoon
heated up like the big rock,

a heavy and rough-shaped
world turned in its slow orbit

to the sun: took it in and held it
for you, convolute, intervolved

upon your fellows, twined and
tangled up rope having kept

itself busy in the winter shed,
to be slowly undone now

in the pale light of spring:
what am I to do with you,

who unhinge your jaw to eat
the mice that plague us

in the dark part of the year,
lying limbless and elongate

and startling my visitor first,
and then me? Please sinuate

yourself to a distance less
proximate. Creep, flee, wind

into the back field, alive
with mice and where you may

greet the birds, the horses,
the voles, but not me.

a glass of water
losing the shoes that took me to work
polenta, broth,
a jonquil, a crocus,

cool tea in the pink pot
water in the clear glass
light at seven
the dog pausing at every bush and bough

a splash of water
bare legs, a skirt,
prune the roses
a son singing in faraway China

China cups,
a salad, a piece of toast,
linger at something lighter,
fragrant, eddy there like a dog.