Whenever Jesus appears at the murky well,
I am there with my five hundred husbands.
It takes Jesus all day to mention their names.

I’ve heard the sea upon the troubled rocks
Waste this past night, with dreams more troubled still,
And where the images that you and I

Led them across a busy street—two lines of traffic.
He started a lost colony for his parents.

Out of the jetty slip the dark bark rides, 
As I more leave, each day, the man-leafed tree, 
Hearing the Norse tell how they sail the sea.

The dove returns; it found no resting place;
It was in flight all night above the shaken seas;
Beneath ark eaves

The shrouded figure struggling to break from the coffin;
The sea giving out muffled cries by night;
The black hose damning the wild river.

Where the stone foaress shoulders the leaning city,
where vacant windows front cracked rooftiles, dislodged
   stones,

He comes to Egypt with the Crusaders. Of all the men
at the inn I'm drawn to him. Is it his eyes?
I ask with mine. He smiles and nods consent.

The best footman’s good
at sweeping up your broken glass,
has a tear for every occasion, knows

They are so busy and self-involved as I hear them muttering in the distance
that they strike me sometimes as sheer marvels:
the dishwasher filling its huge blue gullet—a cluck from the timer,