This is what comes of a Lammas Eve, tho I did not think of that at all this
year until I had awakend at two in the night with the lines “My mother
would be a falconress.

The baby sings in her high chair
at the banquet.

I know most people at this table,
but not everyone. The keynote speaker talks
about how to make beauty in today’s world. A woman
we met during cocktails whispers
that she wants a picture of the baby.

Ray would say no.

He thinks he can protect her, but I don’t.

We flew through a thunderstorm on our way into
Pittsburgh, landing without incident, but a hailstorm
           descended, delaying our bags.

Lady of the two feathers; the Nile where your shoulders
should have been, the way I was born out of your head
whole, out of your wig-crown and frozen oneeye; limestone

Elsewhere bears were trusting their bodies
to take them to safety, but what did bears know

Yesterday in the locker room
a young man told his friend
how he did it to her

He was always so interestingly wrong.
I loved him, in fact for years couldn’t live
without him, he who helped crystallize

The dolphin was all undulation,
riding its whims and churning 
the ocean, dorsal fin and bottlenose

you two who have taken each other
many times before, then this
is something to be trusted,

If a lone feather fell from the sky,
like a paper plane wafting down
from a tree house where a quiet boy