And I followed that with a--
I think a 50-poem series called A Book of Concealments.
And I think what was really being concealed
was the first person pronoun.
I did the book with a lot of first person--
do a series of poems without the first person pronoun.
So I'll just read one poem from that, a favorite which is
dedicated to Diane Rothenberg.
It goes back to a conversation that many people
have when you look at what's going on around you
and you say, I've never been in as terrible a time as this.
"The Times Are Never Right."
Warm days hanging over San Diego where streets
slide into murky canyons.
What is this but home, and what is home but a misnomer?
Pisces has shifted into Aries.
Aggravated bumps shadowing the server's arms
are no concern to anyone yet called to our attention show
a strain, a fearsomeness hard to conceal.
The times are never right.
A skin of air is over everything.
The sun flows like a liquid.
All the universe we see has never happened.
There is no truth to time except for birthdays.
In a city under siege, a ceremony
gathers scattering the birds.
We live forever in the instant in the house we share.
A groom and bride are figures smaller than a thumb,
and little reckoning how short the passage
between death and life.