Cycles

I think it is well known now
how you can take one part of the country
and re-erect it somewhere else, how the abrupt, snow-streaked
mountains of New Mexico hang in a dark corner
of your uncle’s hall. And some mornings in late winter
the trees are diadems of ice,
the way they were once, miraculously, on the river in Florida,
when you were a child. It is not
that we wish the courage
to ask a co-worker
for the loan of her beach house, it is not
that. Or the mad woman,
slick with terror and grease, interrupting mass —
that something in here
would take hold suddenly, and calm her. O the priests
do their duty
because they are pros. And the world
was always crumbling fast; it is not that we wish the world
other than it is. My friend asks
what’s your hurry? we are all headed
to the grave. Only, I guess,
I seek a certain rhythm, the dumb bob
pf a pigeon’s head, the old friend
calling from Kansas, the muck of love —
its resignation and exuberance —the red flowers
returned to the trees
as if winter was nothing to them, nothing at all.