I am sitting thirty feet above the water
with my hand at my throat,
listening to the owls go through the maples

If you know about the Babylonian Jews
coming back to their stone houses in Jerusalem,
and if you know how Ben Franklin fretted

Some blossoms are so white and luscious, when they
hold their long thin hands up you strip them for love
and scatter them on the ground as you walk;

I think this year I’ll wait for the white lilacs
before I get too sad.
I’ll let the daffodils go, flower by flower,

On the first day of viburnum
I followed a school bus for five miles
past the magnolias and the copper lions

This is how I saved one animal’s life,
I raised the lid of the stove and lifted the hook
that delicately held the cheese—I think it was bacon—

I could live like that,
putting my chair by the window,
making my tea,

Inside the picture it is 1903-late spring or early summer.
The three women sit on the front porch steps,
a potted fern to their right on the middle stair,

A bunch of old snakeheads down by the pond
carrying on the swan tradition, hissing
inside their white bodies, raising and lowering their heads

I lay forever, didn’t I, behind those old windows,
listening to Bach and resurrecting my life.
I slept sometimes for thirty or forty minutes