Riding in the wake
of your electric shock,
I was your therapy.

The sun has pulled
the dew from the grass,
leaving the roots warm, humid, soft.

As I sat on the toilet
of a Boeing 727,
somewhere over Ohio

When she brought it to him, wrapped in paper
   gray as skin and greased with rain,
his finger lay heavy on the printed word. The news

As you curl up
your smooth buttocks
lazy against my stomach

The Other Life

I was born in a town with two traffic lights.
It was always early in the morning.
The birds did not have feathers, or beaks.

I lost the time of day about three weeks ago
right after the siesta in the trembling rain,
right after the blue dream in the saffron forest,

We scatter rainbow 
Markers on the rug
And make a diagram of people in the cast. 

It was like taking the train across a border between two countries with disparate languages, one built like a fortress and one slinky as a river, and thinking about how orderly languages are, keeping within borders.

We didn’t miss mercers or chandlers, and anyway the world was still full of silk cloth and candles. We didn’t miss coopers or smiths. We didn’t miss elevator boys or indexers, haberdashers or confectioners or lady’s maids or almoners. We didn’t miss typists. We didn’t miss scriveners. So would we really miss doctors and lawyers and accountants when the day came, and the radio tonight said it was coming, when their expertise was surpassed by software?    *    We didn’t miss the assembly line.