Reconstitute a sense to make of absence
in the still heat of noon, south, summer
where spindled years unravel and unwind,

Mornings like this—no drift
         to the canoe, no bass
at the lure—the shiver-calls of loons

Some pets, Horace says, spend their lives
going over the same old ground: some suburb
      of love. A parking lot

Where in heaven have you been?
Wreathed waif, pale grace,
Scandalous would-be.

Seated towards the rear, facing backwards, smoking
in the cool day, he briskly turned his head

toward the stranger, who jumped onto the moving
streetcar, one hand holding her skirt up and

It is a rugged island of much beauty.
I've just arrived,
rumpled in the harbor bar.

Once I'm sure there's no one else around I
climb, spider-silent, toward my treehouse, held like
a saucer on fingertips in the middle limbs of the oak.

In scrolled aves
and erect
seraphic wings,

I am trying to imagine that I am someone else,
a grocer, an aerialist,
a young viola player who travels
around the country in a bus full of musicians,

The birds with fiery plumage perched
like epaulets on the general's statue

And fountains where girls sun their legs
dipping their toes in the cool ripples