when my father had been dead a wee
I woke
with his voice in my ear
I sat up in bed
and held my breath

Each morning I made my way
among gangways, elevators,
and nurses’ pods to Jane’s room
to interrogate the grave helpers
who tended her through the night

If he and she do not know each oth
they will not meet again; if he av
if she has grown insensible skin u
only the tribute of another’s cry;
as revenge on old lovers or famili

When the young husband picked up h
in the taxi one block from her tow
first lunch together, in a hotel d
with a room key in his pocket,
midtown traffic gridlocked and was

In a week or ten days
the snow and ice
will melt from Cemetery Road.
I’m coming! Don’t move!
Once again it is April.

1. Baseball, I warrant, is not
occupation of the aging boy.
Far from it: There are cats and r
there is her water body. She fills
the skin of her legs up, like wate

A woman who lived
in a tree caught
the moon in a kettle.
The wind on the roof
of the tree thumped

“At pet stores in Detroit, you ca
frozen rats
for seventy-five cents apiece, to
your pet boa constrictor”
back home in Grosse Pointe,

It has happened suddenly,
by surprise, in an arbor,
or while drinking good coffee,
after speaking, or before,
that I dumbly inhabit

Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow
pressing from a clear bowl. All da
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep