1. TERROR OF BEGINNINGS
What are the habits of paradise?
It likes the light. It likes a few pines
on a mass of eroded rock in summer.
You can’t tell up there if rock and air
are the beginning or the end.
What would you do if you were me? she said.
If I were you-you, or if I were you-me?
If you were me-me.
If I were you-you, he said, I’d do exactly
what you’re doing.
—All it is is sunlight on granite.
Pines casting shadows in the early sun.
Wind in the pines like the faint rocking
of a crucifix dangling
from a rearview mirror at a stopsign.
2. THE PALMER METHOD
The answer was
the sound of water, what
what, what, the sprinkler
said, the question
of resilvering the mirror
or smashing it
once and for all the
tea in China
town getting out of this film
noir intact or—damaged
as may be—with tact
was not self-evident
(they fired the rewrite man).
Winters are always touch
and go, it rained,
it hovered on the cusp
between a drizzle
and a shower, it was
a reverie and inconsolable.
There but for the grace
of several centuries
of ruthless exploitation,
we said, hearing
rumors, or maybe whimpers
from the cattle car—
the answer was within
a radius of several
floor plans for the house
desire was always building
and destroying, the
produce man misted
plums and apple-pears
the color of halogen
streetlamps in a puddle.
They trod as carefully
as haste permitted,
she wept beside him
in the night.
3. HABITS OF PARADISE
Maybe if I made the bed,
it would help. Would the modest diligence
seem radiant, provoke a radiance?
(Outside aspens glittering in the wind.)
If I saw the sleek stroke of moving darkness
was a hawk, high up, nesting
in the mountain’s face, and if,
for once, I didn’t want to be the hawk,
would that help? Token of earnest,
spent coin of summer, would the wind
court me then, and would that be of assistance?
The woman who carries the bowl
bows low in your presence, bows to the ground.
It doesn’t matter what she’s really thinking.
Compassion is formal. Suffering is the grass.
She is not first thought, not the urgency.
The man made of fire drinks. The man
made of cedar drinks.
Two kinds of birds are feasting in the cottonwoods.
She sprinkles millet for the ones that feast on grief.
She strews tears for the thirsty ones
desire draws south when the leaves begin to turn.