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.

We have mastered the mysterious art
of harming those we claim to love the most

How does one know an El Greco?
I can’t say, but I just know

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

Tired already or just confused?

The ghost of him presiding
over those last, lost afternoons

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

        —Are you an Ex-is-ten-tial-ist,
Mr. Mister?

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,