Once upon a time, began the old tale,
and that's how we knew it was a tale. Shackleton's
fare-thee-well voyage, ship marooned in ice

we called the game Jenny made up driving
back roads through West Virginia

at twice the speed on signs. Foot on

The thing was exquisite and superbly arranged.
It happened in April, and took place on a day
So mild you'd say love purposely made it that way.

Our plane has already been de-iced
but sleet comes over the wings again like a coating of dust
on the wide leaves of a rubber plant—

The tenderness in music
brings back moments I've shared
with some who are as I am,

I thought I knew something
about loneliness, but I was wrong.
I'd never been that far east before,

He's the camera, I'm the pose. In this photograph I am
happy.
                                •

We offer each other a dark
brew. But we must drink.
A seduction is the setting up

Never receives visitors, only inhabitants.
Outside, icicles thaw from the eaves in winter,
And even with its windows painted shut,

In his prison letters, Bonhoeffer is thankful
for a hairbrush, for a pipe and tobacco,
for cigarettes and Schelling's Morals Vol. II.