GONE FOR THE DAY, SHE IS THE DAY

Dawn is a dog’s yawn, space

in bed where a body should be,

a nectared yard, night surviving

in wires through which what voices,

what needs already move—and the mind

nibbling, nibbling at Nothingness

like a mouse at cheese:

Spring!

•

Sometimes one has the sense

that to say the name

God is a great betrayal,

but whether one is betraying

God, language, or one’s self

is harder to say.

•

Gone for the day, she is the day

opening in and around me

like flowers she planted in our yard.

Christ. Not flowers.

Gone for the day, she is the day

razoring in with the Serbian roofers,

and ten o’clock tapped exactly

by the one bad wheel of the tortilla cart,

and the newborn’s noonday anguish

eased. And the om the mind

makes of traffic and the bite

of reality that brings it back.

And the late afternoon afterlight

in which a much-loved dog lies

like a piece of precocious darkness

lifting his ears at threats, treats, comings, goings …

•

To love is to feel your death

given to you like a sentence,

to meet the judge’s eyes

as if there were a judge,

as if he had eyes,

and love.