Midsummer with other men's lovers, fumbles
on a living room couch, significance asleep
upstairs: I come through the door, I come

She was born Sarah Gossett Ballenger—
Sarah our mother's proper name, Gossett our mother's
family name, Ballenger the name of her father.

It was I think in a small town in Ohio

I taped to the wall above my office desk the postcard
Of Klimt's painting called The Park

Dear Uncle Chris, welcome back to my mind
   after so many years. Forgive me for
         not thinking you up sooner: the coiled-vine

   An eye is opened
in a tree
by paring away the bark,

Is that what he's saying? You can't be sure—
And this isn't the usual stance of prayer;
Still, it's what I hear as I look at him—

A cunning oracle withholds the best.
The tax on prophecy is not to tell
the founder of a city how his sister

Once upon a time I loved your rectum
as well as your ear, your skin took on
the majesty of feather when you spread

A deer!—nibbling on the few green things
that grow in my strawy meadow.
Mine, we say here: my studio, my meadow, my road.

   Waking in silence and, through tilted blinds,
the mark of red bougainvillea—pink light tossed
         at a white door. Out of sleep, I turn