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But the only death in
this poem is abstract.

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And Walt Whitman's America
is Barbara's shattered.

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Everything I have
is somebody else's.

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Even seeming to me
today, the scent

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of acacia blossoms outside
my back door, milk and honey.

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I tried to save the moth that
fluttered against my bedroom

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ceiling all night before
it started to die.

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I scooped it in my
hands, but its commotion

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made them sweat, damaging
its wings and I dropped it.

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Disenchanted in some dry leaves
in the corner of the porch.

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Good, let it take its chances.

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At least my sweaters are safe.

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After I sent the email, I saw
on the internet last minute

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flights to Paris for $158.

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Je le reprends!

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Morgan translated that,
I don't speak French.

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They say couples have on average
10 arguments that they'll never

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resolve.

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One, whether having
a lover who's not me

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constitutes cheating.

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A brown dove in the pine tree.

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On a post-it taped
to my computer

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I've written wait for the
wisest of all counselors, time.

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Some days I read it
and think about you.

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And others about
how the object falls

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as the last word in the
sentence, offset by a comma.

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For a week I carried in
my purse the transcript

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downloaded off the internet
and authenticated with a stamp.

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Government exhibit
P20056T01-445-A.

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I couldn't stop thinking
about the last No.

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How it's mis- punctuated
ending that way.

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I forget who, but a Times critic
wrote pejoratively about a poet

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for exhibiting infinite
faith in language.

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Is the offense
infinite or faith?

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I'm not seriously asking, just
letting the abstracts burn out

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like hot coals.

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My house silent.

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In San Diego, over
coffee, we talked

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about Nabokov,
synaesthesia, metaphor,

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and the brain's hardwiring.

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We used the buttery sun
and discussed how sufferers

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are overwhelmed by malls.

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My teacher, Frank,
didn't understand

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poets who wrote about malls.

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So I wrote about
childhood and the ocean.

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When I told Morgan I wanted
a monkey in this one,

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he said, what about
the ape in 2001:

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A Space Odyssey who
throws up a bone?

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I thought he meant vomit.

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Wendy took a picture in Costa
Rica of three monkey skulls

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lined up on a picnic table.

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The monkeys starved,
because too much rain

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caused the fruit to rot.

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