the driver of the chestnut mare is waiting like a friend

black cart quiet

the wind you’ve become

today we cleaned the gardens for winter
left smoking piles of disbelief
dug up a crescent moon

i hear the clatter of nothing falling

at midnight in the kitchen—

my wife wakes up, dies

sunlight weeping from her eyes

sat through the storm last night

            wondered where all that rain fell—

tight roof, sound mind, eternity chasing its tail

freshly made, i twist in the wind

            snake skin returning to an earlier molt

            the dark in a dog set to howl

a catalpa leaf bares its teeth, rakes

my face over and over

makes blood flow clear as water

i stand naked in the wind this morning

sky flies backward toward a sun

darker than light can see

like the child up in a tree

staring lost through swarming leaves

your being has entered the dream

squirrel will be killed again yesterday

there on the road—

whose future measured by the number of feeding crows

moon whimpers

harvesters slit the night

father cannot find child in the stubble of the field

the night i wasn’t conceived

still stirs the mind—

blue leaves gently coming loose

the calm face is in another country

another world—

we walk from Ohio to vote for it

the joy of motionless motion

comes after death

when you are the morning every ginkgo leaf falls

traveler sleeps late, hurries away

neighbor outside raking dreams

answer the ringing phone with imbricate possibilities

my face slides off in a November rain

swirls round the circular drain

sucked into the moon

rain before dawn

dawn ends the dream

the rain could be starlings, or not

my skin is old
thin
you can see to anywhere through it

cracks in my ceiling

close themselves to hear

footsteps of moss on the roof

when the fly on the screen

            crawled out of my eye

                        there was an entire world to build

a little sunlight travels

from nowhere outside

lies down in the gutters i clean

one leaf
will be enough
to drain all branches of wind

the act of alone
is giving birth inside me
she holds one ginkgo leaf in her hand

my silent womb
your useless wings
each life leashed to its unreal binding

she stepped into the water
a stone without skin
felt for the first time cold winds