1.
The indiscriminate light comes home
and the sailor comes home from the sea,
who could link his thoughts of her sweet white thigh
to any business at hand. He returns
to blue candles on a chocolate cake, the flickering tokens
of her regard. It’s strength of lung
that floats a wish. The dark one’s breasts used to melt
when she stretched. Reach me the ashtray, I’d say,
and never let on what I watched when she did. Here
and gone. She never gave me trouble at night.
Here’s love in a cup,
his Penelope says. May it speed you back
to me.
2.
Some of this is morning fog and some of it
afternoon. The event somehow escapes her.
City much missed
by landlocked exiles, now
that she’s here, she still makes her way by rumor
and the clock. I can hear the water rising
in your sleep, the separate strands
of raveled breath. Lies down to work,
takes walks in honor of an absent guide.
The tree in the lungs, the bishop pine, these great stiff rattles
protesting the wind.
3.
The wind that year blew the topsoil away, and salt
came up the river. Toby came up from town.
Toby with the running eyes and a cane that’d put the fear of God
into any dog
came up from town to be fed, and was, and died
one night when the weather changed.
Not enough breath to cloud the mirror. And later
some woman who came for his shoes. What did you do?
We hoped for rain.