Jill tells me about the
show she is making

The house burst into flame. That’s a cliché, I thought, burst into flame. For I had been reading day and night. Perhaps I left the stove on after cooking an omelet. Or let the lint cake inside the dryer. Such was the fascination of the book, though scholars who study it all their lives, lives that pass in a breath, claim it has no answers. I held my copy close to my chest, 

Here is the world, right beside me,
a little garden with a swing,
some dirt and a red shovel,

I am a child acting Romeo.
I love Juliet desperately
but I cannot say it.

the instant the sky wakes my eyes are shut I’m listening to the rainfall huh 
 huh huh listening to half a lifetime of rainfall isn’t romantic
the sound of rainfall approaching unites with the sound of a solitary car

an ant dies, and no one mourns
a bird dies, and no one mourns if it isn’t a crested ibis
a monkey dies, and monkeys mourn

In my spiderweb
You got caught,
My precious.

I sharpened knives
All night.
To welcome you

Photo: sitting by the cabin on Lake Au Train
We rented every summer, reading John Cheever,

They talk oil in heavy jackets and plaid over 
their coffee, they talk Texas and the north cold,