The Brooklyn Rail

There is the question of what we do together. How will
we make enough time. How will we carry all the bags.
Who will keep the door open. How could the train go
any slower. Who will water the spider plants. Who will
remember the names of the eider ducks, and the auks.
Who will put their hands against the grate of a radiator.
Who will protect the young. Who will hold a bowl over 
the body to bathe it. Who will swim across the canal.
Who will chop the broccoli. Who will hear the crickets
sing. Who will sense the rain coming. Who will walk 
down the same hallway over and over. Who will breathe 
into their own hands. Who will feel the earth move. Who 
will shake the empty box. Who will see the sentence 
lighting up.

Poem in Which You Become an Imaginary Being

Two days ago a friend of mine
Died at age 63.

When I was young
I thought I knew what a corpse smelled like.

I moved in the way of a feeling.
Before I was born,

My mother told me stories
About cow auctions, Ronald Reagan

Became the president
With a glass gun in his hand.

We always lived near sand.
It crystallized into sea

Glass the color of opaque blue.
On the other side there was nothing:

I moved my hand over it constantly
And this was my first obsession.

So many birds flew out
Of the tree across the street,

There must have been hundreds living there.
My grandfather came to me

In deep wooden bowls, we filled
Them with citrusy fruits and made

An architecture of constantly darkening time.
Happiness was the moment

Before you needed more happiness,
Or so a woman in a blue hat told me

Before she laughed herself back into place.
When I first came here, I wanted to tell

Someone I had never seen so many fruit trees
And without asking the last few people

To love me said yes yes
We know