“The man at the table across from mine/is eating a painting with a knife and fork./It looks to be a lesser Pollock, or perhaps/a Clyfford Still, regardless, abstract/expressionism, surprisingly modern/for a restaurant…

“Almost as suddenly, I thought of all the important lines by others that have stayed with me through the years: ‘You must change your life’ (Rilke), ‘How soon unaccountable I became’ (Whitman), ‘practice…

“When the weather turns left I’ll turn into it,/reaching for washouts with my inherited pedipalps,/wagering grapeshot precision I can get home/before lightning thumbtacks me to the palisades./My middle game has never been that…

“The man at the table across from mine/is eating a painting with a knife and fork./It looks to be a lesser Pollock, or perhaps/a Clyfford Still, regardless, abstract/expressionism, surprisingly modern/for a restaurant with…

“When fog hangs this thick there is the pinkest/odor of trouble     One chair at the table’s made/of painted wood and sits empty     Before we settled/this country     before…

“All my life, in any place,/ for no reason, my grandfather’s 280 acres call out my name. Free and clear./Sister Gary, Gay, Gaynette. But all those stale breaths have gone somewhere/else. Cool dirt,…

“These days, though, I leave the lavender alone./I prefer brushing their velvety leaves accidentally, releasing/    their soapy scent, summoning the bees/whose hind claws are so compacted with pollen/they appear to wear tiny…

“The world wants to tell you what it means./Words everywhere Messages: in the thin lines/of tide, in the waves’ foamed cursive left behind/on the flat, unrolled paper of sand./Bird skips, blank space, hieroglyphs,/wind…

“He raises one arm and you can’t tell if he’s pointing or offering his hand. Your clothes catch fire—you imagine both of you walking away from this alive. The burning man cocks his…

  “One little chicken shouldn’t cause/this much grief, Gary/says. There is no small grief,/I tell him, for all are/interconnected. One touch/sends tremors through our core/like the fly in the web/that wakes the spider…