You hoarded oyster shells through the R months;
they jut from the backyard garden like unwashed ears
of earth, and listen to your footsteps growing heavier.

He slept on his hands.
On a rock.
On his feet.

In the unshaded hill
where you kill
every day I have climbed

Fever and ooze, fever and ooze: 
Pronoun by pronoun, verb by irregular verb, 
Winter grows great with spring: March: 

It was a summer for sitting naked in
The backyard, the deep drizzle deploying the young
As an aspect of the lately-discovered elemental.

“The summer has gone by both quickly and slowly.
It’s been a kind of eternity, each day spinning
out its endlessness, and yet with every look

This is how I saved one animal’s life,
I raised the lid of the stove and lifted the hook
that delicately held the cheese—I think it was bacon—

Two verticals lie down,
each to the other, a horizon,
each to the other,

At White River Roadhouse in the Yukon
A bell rings in the late night:
A lone car on the Alaska highway

Like a busy street scene
Reflected in a butcher’s window:
Trimmed head of a large pig