"From Mohammed, the Servant and Prophet of Allah,
   to Muqavas, Leader of the Copts: There is
safety and security for those believers who

In a PBS documentary, from a drawer
the ballerina pulled a love poem
penned by the late choreographer

We were descending, and sounds rushed
into the now-opened portal to the eardrum:
the shudder of the jet powering back, suddenly.

And there it is all at once a red Russell Stover
Blimp flying north after the plane
That just took off from West Palm Beach

This vast meandering flat-bottomed gully
much smaller than a valley, with a hump
of rock spined all its length is home to—what,

I wake at night and pace
the length of my digestive tract
to where the path obscures

I finger this vagabond cloth to numbness.
I can't even capture your hands
or what carries us limb by limb.

We wrote for Miss Price. We made voices
that weren't ours for three full pages:
the old, the immigrants, Negroes, Jews.

Better give me something to smoke
If I'm going to love you, better

Take what once was so hard to give up

Ladies, it is late. The lake is ice.
You've surely seen the heron fly beyond
the great black oak. And watched the robins go,