But the only death in this poem is abstract.
And Walt Whitman's America is Barbara's shattered.
Everything I have is somebody else's.
Even seeming to me today, the scent
of acacia blossoms outside my back door, milk and honey.
I tried to save the moth that fluttered against my bedroom
ceiling all night before it started to die.
I scooped it in my hands, but its commotion
made them sweat, damaging its wings and I dropped it.
Disenchanted in some dry leaves in the corner of the porch.
Good, let it take its chances.
At least my sweaters are safe.
After I sent the email, I saw on the internet last minute
flights to Paris for $158.
Je le reprends!
Morgan translated that, I don't speak French.
They say couples have on average 10 arguments that they'll never
resolve.
One, whether having a lover who's not me
constitutes cheating.
A brown dove in the pine tree.
On a post-it taped to my computer
I've written wait for the wisest of all counselors, time.
Some days I read it and think about you.
And others about how the object falls
as the last word in the sentence, offset by a comma.
For a week I carried in my purse the transcript
downloaded off the internet and authenticated with a stamp.
Government exhibit P20056T01-445-A.
I couldn't stop thinking about the last No.
How it's mis- punctuated ending that way.
I forget who, but a Times critic wrote pejoratively about a poet
for exhibiting infinite faith in language.
Is the offense infinite or faith?
I'm not seriously asking, just letting the abstracts burn out
like hot coals.
My house silent.
In San Diego, over coffee, we talked
about Nabokov, synaesthesia, metaphor,
and the brain's hardwiring.
We used the buttery sun and discussed how sufferers
are overwhelmed by malls.
My teacher, Frank, didn't understand
poets who wrote about malls.
So I wrote about childhood and the ocean.
When I told Morgan I wanted a monkey in this one,
he said, what about the ape in 2001:
A Space Odyssey who throws up a bone?
I thought he meant vomit.
Wendy took a picture in Costa Rica of three monkey skulls
lined up on a picnic table.
The monkeys starved, because too much rain
caused the fruit to rot.