Sweet runs the water ever
out of spring and meadow,
frothing low, rising,

a homely word:
a plosive, a long cry, a quiet stop, a silent letter
          like a storm and the end of a storm,

                I want to tell you, it has nothing to do with trees or luck, that the last carnations crumbling in the gutter, the float stripped down by the rain, even the drum major and the fireman, lifting their beers to the moon, are part of some other show, some other season, which the barkers have never known.

        as he drew the silhouettes

against the vast

         machinery, suspending them,

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

The blonde carrying the tote bag full of bones
Is dressed in a chiffon blouse printed with

Persimmon-colored butterflies

As you curl up
your smooth buttocks
lazy against my stomach