How lucky I am tonight to be holding a lantern 
at this railroad crossing in the middle of America 
and not clinging to a leaky raft on the north Atlantic,

In 1027, not far from Bernburg,
eighteen peasants were seized
by a common delusion.

Dozens of burning, fish-shaped clouds dove for the horizon,
determined to make more of an already explosive sunset.

my boys & I refused to believe it was Michael who didn’t make it through the night even though the cameras strewn across the sky showed the mansion lawn specked with red sirens & from my own covers I imagined him to be simply asleep the way I slept 

When the man can’t sleep, he builds
a matchstick replica of Auschwitz
in his basement, working from memory.

Ask the sand crabs for an inch by inch
description of my hips:
they’ve been scaling the depression I left

most people have absolutely the wrong idea of how to go about cutting a throat, the right way to do it on animals anatomically similar to humans such as dogs, sheep, veal calves and very young pigs—emphatically not on full-grown pigs 

I

they have no gathering places
        for taking of council nor
agreements

My books remain on the shelves as I left them last year
but all the words have died.

First, they get up, and they take these ups and downs in stride.