Narcissus was finally released, though sentenced
by demonic pardon to wander the ends of earth
searching for her. In southern Arizona, he heard

So weakened by life he could just pass
through the world this hospital bed,
he lies as still as someone already dead.

        Pastures where the grass round granite grows
and not immoderate greenness gives homage
to the long fight with clutched rock & snowcap

When they were big, they knew they must leave the barnyard
and make their way in the world:
the first little pig took her toothbrush and her mother's

At 1.4 million atmospheres
xenon, a gas, goes metallic.
Between squeezed single-bevel

The end of autumn
unfolds in a series of textures and places:
rough towels, the laundry

Heavy, and now grizzled (pro tem) and generally high colored.
The voice light, tripping over itself, setting off at an angle
into the thickets of vocabulary. It’s gone; let it go.

Father, the bird writing writes bird’s nest soup —
a frail, disciplined structure, spun from its spittle
with bits of straw and dirt, then boiled with beaten eggs . . .

Acacias. Acacias and rain make May here, the way
lindens and rain make July. Layers of complication and sorrow, 
which precipitate as opinion. Brusque. Off-kilter. Uncalled-for.

You have a raspberry silk suit.
May I fuck you in it?