I wonder if Agnes meant that innocent love is the kind of love that is within us.

We dug a hole and dropped the bird in, along with a few flowers we had plucked. We didn’t touch the bird with our bare hands, in case death was contagious.

relentless pressure has been placed
on the page. I paid someone to care for them so I 
could pattern these vowels and one
is eight and asking me each
night to read what I’ve made
in what they call my office

Thank you for shelter, the blanket of morning. Of this morning. When first frost found naked earth, or when you found that one shade tree in the desert of last summer. Sun like a knife blade, now the reluctant release of pain, those precious moments when it goes away. Do you still remember having such moments? 

Wouldn’t you say that the locksmiths come back from fishing for whales
their hands full
and their looks ecstatic

It’s Thursday and you are alive,
you are at a sidewalk café
anywhere in the world:

the sun setting, the tiled roofs,
everything vibrant in the heat.

He’s not what you expected
As you might have expected.

Unkempt. Eyes bright but restrained.
Clothes damp from the steady rain

We make pilgrimages, we pay tribute,
as its backward-glancing heroine
is a painter’s tribute to a poet’s stanzas.

all day I’ve watched two white moths
trail and braid each other in flight
over the pond and grassy run-up 
to the tree line 

Kolumbo, a line of twenty blown 
and unblown volcanic cones, I wished I could fasten to 
anyone. To be dead and still, a tsunami triggers into white 

shadow above us. That’s love for you, a terror so white 
it cleaves the bones.