Garment of Sand

Disconcerting when guests,
retreating to the guest
room, play their own
music on their own
phones, unnerving
when old people take showers.


                  *


Though my thoughts dump
into the pose, my symphony
stiffens to ward
off the plastic wheels of sleep

the latch catching

unlatching in duple time matching
my lack of overture to the neighbors
to fix their gate.
An old friend who’s also



old leaves a night
gown on the guest
bed, blind

as a bodice



high-necked
as a spirit guide.

Hidden

Of all the penitent holidays,
Easter is pent-up, prêt-a
Spring. The patron saint
Of the season is plastic


Bags caught in broad
Branches like bunched
Up doves. What is memory
But a microchip, an eye


Doctor the size of a child?
One year, I found lambs’
Tails instead of eggs my father
Had laid carefully in the stone wall.


Hit rate for change: without
Fail. Ducks glide in
Then run aground like step
Ping off a moving train.

Bestiary

Stages of child
Hood: Babies
Soft children
Hard children
Grown men


                  *


                                                               You can always tell a monster

Writes Dwight
Garner in the New
York Times

                  He wears scarves

Indoors

Does this clever
Turn trivialize
Monstrous behavior
Or right-size
Lucian Freud?


                  *


Gestaltformation
May cause
Craquelure of mind

The only way out is in
Side the fist of the myth in

Which God

In her negative
Capability rests
Her case. To lay
Down the labyrinth, clear
The church floor for
The stampede.