At a certain age, he could no longer sleep,
so he took to walking, in the depth of night

I found a word, somewhere
by the coast, caught in a bush.
Threading fingers in, I pulled
the word out—it was white.

Lizard Point
We came through the mangroves and found him, a bit of dumpling in the broth. Only his head and upper arms still adhered to the sand; the rest of him was lifting in the tide.

He spent all morning thinking of how to paint her. But the main problem was where. Outdoors seemed obvious; it was a beautiful morning…

“Yeah, I heard about it already,” Tom said. He didn’t look up. He was reading something on his phone. Then, although I had moved past him to the coffee, he continued, “Mayor’s son. This is gonna be a bad day.”

Ah, Mannahatta (heel) blue skies and the big egg bagel (toe)

If in the night some distant sparkle
makes clear the extension of space and time,

Our thoughts turned to Eldridge Street,
the first home my parents bought.
My mom analyzed it as
congenitally malformed:

is a photograph: I can see it

The cows all dream
of fields extending
in all directions,

Two brothers went out to face the cold
It was a moon-frozen night in the country
For a mile they walked barefoot on the road
Until they came to the barn where they would sleep

Who will I be ten
years from now? How
might

I see that vision,
do I want to
see

Ocean outside and
I find myself wondering

On Bodega head
you meet the winds

Late spring rain

The wind tonight
is making
conversation—
pushy, loud,
self important,

The moon is trying
to get my attention
through the window

The devil you know
is the man who makes a law
that tells women not
to take their bodies

The softness
of the night

As the rain
drowns the night

At the end of the
line, the line twists and becomes

The indentured line
of sky and land and
the running colors—
blue, pink, gray,

A Paris, encore;
the sky is grayer as we
go north, says Larry

Through tunnels toward
Firenze, secretive hills
keep us in the dark

This is half
the journey
when the plane
turns over

Stars over Mexico
and the pure black
of the earth late at night;

The slab of wing
makes its own
space,

Airport hotel after
a missed flight—
beige, brown, and blonde
furnishings and a big TV—

Someday the old pony
in the field will fall asleep

Our dog dreams
of barking,
of snuffling,
of running;

Train wail oh lord it’s
a lonely punch in the night

A bird in a box of snow
and shards of mirror; a border

Now the scenes
I had not known
would remain
in memory
come back on
call, or maybe
unbidden

Jesus said, I am
gonna dunk this basketball

Back there where
the bay
window was,
behind
the washing
machine
and next to
the screened
porch. Back there
where the
records were.
Back there
I go in
my mind
and three songs
jump out.

Sasquatch, holy rover,
you are out there

What does a 280-
character poem
look like? Is it
syllabic?

The plants in the garden
test the night soil, search
the soil with sense beyond

With Spring in the air
but nights still cold
I wonder how
we will come out
of this sad, numb time.

New York
was
my dreams

in steel,
glass,
sunset—

Perhaps the memory begins with
eyes opening to yellow-blue-white daylight.

Perhaps the memory begins as
the towers glow in the window by the bed.

What if I stood on the road in the rain
and looked down the line of white fences,
and what if I stood on the road in the rain
and listened to the palms, palms, palms shake?

outside the nest_the edges_
branches_the slick
rime_dew evaporates_
the sun_claws are prone_

Watching the
nostalgic
TV law
show, my wife
and I find
ourselves so