Mother of fictions
and of irony,
help us to laugh.

In a deep well I swung a pickax
into packed caliche, so dark I aimed the ax
by feel. My brother leaned back safe

There are still hammers, aren’t there,
somewhere, and bricks dried in brick kilns?

Work has stopped for the winter,

Make It Simple

make it so simple a child
of six can understand the

A light from the ceiling is swinging outside on Forty-second
Street traffic is zinging
Collaborating on The Construction of Boston is interesting

Child-crafted clouds, all sheen and fleece and curlicues,
as a girl, with her tongue in her teeth, would have made them,
the point of her crayon squashed against the page.

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river—
Unbearable pain becomes its own cure.

Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn to sighing;

When snow soothes the view, it doesn’t pay to reason
with each shapely flake of its sinless topsoil.
Better admire the crystal’s moronic tolerance.

I’m at a double wake
in Springfield, for a childhood
friend and his father

If you, X, take this woman, Y
and if you, Y, take this man, X,
you two who have taken each other