The planets whirled across the blackboard all morning, 
Saturn with its twelve rings, Jupiter with its belts,
red Mars, green Venus, the familiar blue Earth
where we sat in that eighth-grade class learning light

Another fall dusk and I was out
  with my son to pick up
the fallen walnuts, holding them to

My weakness is for color words.
It doesn't begin to annoy until such time
As the parrots and Africas are

Io a scatter of wool and its own litter
the skull stares out at the road below: socket rings
cool as trigger-guards. The furled-paper sinuses

“I had hoped to satisfy my love for her a little by giving her a bouquet; it was a complete waste of time. Such a thing is possible only through literature or copulation. I write this not because it is new to me, but because perhaps it is a good thing to put warnings frequently into writing.”

I do not move through time. I move
through rain. When rain falls
straight down on mossy brick walks

We think they go well together—the translucent
vanilla orchid, the slipper orchid, the ginger
fragrances of the fiddle leaf, the swollen,

Across my work yard the bones lie,
a rubble in crests and waves, piled
white, grooved brown, ocean to ocean—

 Smell the lilies and the columbine,
intoxicating rose, seductive lily-
of-the-valley, come smell! Can't they die?

The things between me 
and time: 
My daily forgetfulnesses.