These are always funny.
I wrote these poems in Iowa City in 1974,
and they're all about snow and cold because that's
what it always was.
And when I get back to California,
it heats up a little bit.
This is called "January."
In some other life, I'll stand where I'm standing now
and will look down and will see my own face
and not know what I'm looking at.
These are the nights when the oyster begins her pearl, when
the spider slips through his wired rooms,
and the barns cough and the grass quails.
[DISTANT SIREN]
It's only a matter of time.