Child-crafted clouds, all sheen and fleece and curlicues,
as a girl, with her tongue in her teeth, would have made them,
the point of her crayon squashed against the page.

How does one know an El Greco?
I can't say, but I just know
something's always out

Here I am       I’ve been watching the animals
              I watch them in the afternoon
that seems to drop my being       lower into time

bullfrogs singing from the long grasses
              horses captured in a video
              Wild is a horse’s word       They are running

At the Hotel Oblivion, Airport Drive
  Mezzanine, Conference Center B

The big claw takes its angle
and drives down hard,
shivering Kezar’s concrete bleachers

I am, Madam., no beggar, but a peddler of dreams,
Purveyor of the Gospel of Beauty, Reciter of Rhymes . . .

And they regarded him from the shadows of their porches,

      You keep poking at it
finger, drill, snout & awl
till you find yourself at the back

Far into fever, attached by cords to the soft-
clicking machines, he sleeps
in a bed in a room not his own.
People enter and pass like ghost-blown
fogs. He is a slow walk
with limbs that recently gave way.
He is part of the blue snowfall.

And what did you see, sequoia-quiet, looking out at black 
night. No islands, no kings or corridors of fury. 
But the districts where we were born, a few icy stars, 

I've heard the Resurrection never was,
that Christ was never buried, never rose—
(a caveat prescribed by Roman laws).