The day without question will come for you.
You will be ready, you are always so,
Ready for beauty to be its opposite,

We all sensed we were in it, but didn’t know 
who would fund this long a study, what the premise
behind it could be.  

        She knew just about everyone and loved almost everyone,
including Stravinsky, and was greatly misunderstood.
She relived her life not from notes but from memory.

Deception is necessary. Disguises, too.
When I wrap this cloak around me,
I change into a barefoot, pious fellow

Looking at the picture used in the obituary,
I’d peg your Pops as a secret admirer
of Ferraris, too smart to own one but the red dream

I took this from him and won’t give it back, the idea
that paths in the woods, paths worn or chopped,
that in their coming and going, how they’re revealed

Come with me to buy a linden tree, stopping first
at the bank, for I need a loan to buy a linden tree.

Two people dying I assumed with no more preparedness
than I, recently and by accident said how they’d like to go.
For each a party and for one, people wearing balloons

As I walked along St. Blanche Church Road
At dusk, I saw a small bird
Hovering in the air above a lamppost.

The wind blows yesterday’s Globe
Across Beacon Street.
Dead leaves dance