CHANGE MY MIND

So there's a violent cataclysm—

a pulverizing nothing  

pulsing away

at the galaxy's center.

So there's a shivering, 

unrepentant caterpillar 

chewing a hole 

in your prom night corsage.

What is courage 

but fear acknowledged? 

What's the fire of hell 

but god's love—rejected? 

To be wounded is

to be blessed—

but even that's 

too obvious. 

When pressed,  

to affirm all the beauty 

and the horror 

with a kiss and a smile—

to be content 

to have a destroyed

supernova 

for a soul—

now that should keep 

your fact-checkers 

busy and employed—at least

for a little while.

APOSTROPHE

O, dancing shafts 

of April light;

o, contagious gusts 

of bright blithe wind;

o, silvery ghosts 

of sighing rain; o, oval

of repetition, over 

and again:  

please forgive 

this outdated mode 

of address;

please forget 

the specificity of things.

Use these lexical bits 

of straw and grass 

to feather me a nest; 

weave me a fence 

to pen in my doubt; 

o, do your best

to grow me a heart 

that is jacketed 

in the genius 

of a diamond—that is, 

harder 

than the land 

which surrounds it, yet 

even more 

delicately faceted. 

NO POEM TODAY

O blessed silver-

lake mirror 

of morning—

o tulips, delicate, 

soft, and diffuse,

breathing in 

small beads 

of opalescent water 

and breathing out 

the inchoate language 

of spring—

please put this poet

in his place 

for a change;

put him 

to some better use

than these eager young 

sparrows' peckish 

chirping to distraction, 

as if trying to rustle 

up the perfect 

word for le mot juste. 

COLOR IS THE LANGUAGE OF BIRDS

Such common 

pigeons, the color 

of storm clouds—

but such

iridescent necks,

like pearls of new rain.

You could do worse, 

they seem to claim,

than the world 

at its absolute peak  

of nonplussed. 

Just you take 

a tip from us: 

make a Dadaist plan 

to be less profound. 

Say something blue; 

do something 

round; be 

as you seem. If you can 

speak, why 

wouldn't you? 

TALISMAN

In the freshening air 

of silent twilight—that abyss 

into which all our soiled 

yesterdays blow—

each squirrel 

perched on his pole like 

a sentinel—like the king of all 

the untold animal species;

and each dove, a bust 

of Palace on her throne,

sitting naked and noble 

in her nest of maple branches; 

and me 

at the window, trying 

to let the day go. 

C'est la vie.

Comme ci, comme ça.

Sig transit gloria mundi.

Que sera, sera.

Those are things 

my old proponents 

used to say. But 

to give a thing away, 

that must mean 

I used to own it. 

RECAPITULATION

Fierce first days of April 

always seem to want 

to foment the start of something 

rather rowdier than holy;

from our bone-

dry indoor hiding places, 

even we change-averse conservatives 

cannot keep from staring 

at all of the rioting 

magnolias.

OPENING DAY

How little we understand, 

for how rough 

is the draft

at the end of the month 

of March? It's almost 

simple math: 

you tell April 

what your plan is, 

and she tries not to laugh. 

A silent witness to herself 

with no one else to tell, 

and patient and calm 

as the inside 

of a church bell, 

her grim blades of rain 

extricate spiders 

from their spouts

so the sun that has been hidden 

away in all things all along 

can come out.