Righted, they would form
a somnambulistic stance in the
stoop-shouldered dark; shuffling
in the absence of skin stretched

Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,
And all the other life too small to name.

Something to drink helps, of course, and humor must live
even on that dark corner where once
your life was threatened. Something in the voice, in the telling,
must signal I am safe now and am trying

Driving through the mining counties
Green River to Central City
light of dawn like water
shadows rising to the surface

Now I am flying a land
compressed below me, a realm,
I alight and descend to:
Long Island as it was in the cold

Far below our lab
Two doom-planes are about to bump.

Mouth won
Because eye watched

in the swirling there is some meaning that draws me
without specific reference I’m saying to her vagina

Needled by the notion that a poet should know
      reality

Sometimes I think I will be broken by your lukewarm Hand.