TELL ME, HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

The fire pit is root.
Graying knuckles of ginger: root.
A moment in nostalgia’s hallway: root.
Empty pill foils from the bedside table: root.
A vigorously watered jade: the absence of root.
A ceiling draped with hanging weeds keeps it: root.
An invitation for tea in the beading parlor: root.
The height of one’s offspring: root.
The weight of the cloudbanks: root.
Days without shadow: root.
Intelligentsia: root.
Wineglass: root.
Pine muppets: root.
Prayer: root.
The sighing of god, the moonwalk of god:
All root & root & root.

{COTTAGE RELIC II}

A little fleck of night caught in his eye.

The burro in the film stepped and startled, backing away inside the frame.

Charlie Horses whinnied around in back streets buried in the sounds of children.

Thick blue chalk left a light dusting on his fingertips.

He bought a painting; in it yellow houses stacked like book spines or teabags.

There was a little bit of night smeared in the frame.

Outside, the same bird in the same tree.

We’ll just have to wait, he thought, until the snow melts—children’s voices leading him
out to the veranda and then back in again.

It isn’t chalk, he muttered, it isn’t chalk.

The car alarm coming from under the railroad bridge three blocks away could have been a little more specific.

Back streets around his cottage darken down with moonlight.

Spring or a touch of spring, too early to say, he told the bird.

That one small freckle on his lower lip speaks in Thai.

He wanted to let the bird in, feed it a little handful of grain.

That night still caught in his eye.

His house, his bird, his long white cane.

He could hear the sinking temperature of the rains.

When the film ends—a little flapping sound. The reel spins.

He cooks French toast with a little nutmeg, maple-cured bacon.

The slightest bit of night.

In the coming days the bird will just let herself in.

Nights in cooling bathwater.

In through the window to candlelight or moonlight.

A bowl full.

The rain, cold, hangs longer on the branches of the trees.

Summer rain is sluttier.

His movement in the bath is deep and conscious.

Children’s laughter echoes on long gravel driveways.

Fingers soaked to pruning proves it isn’t chalk.

He dries his hands first, water trains down his back.

Once a bird flew right at the window, but steered course just in time.

The train is almost insignificant, so very few are its cars.

Whistle and bell; it must be morning, the comfort of the steel wheels right on track.

Rain, a little grain, the tiniest beak.

A drawing in blue chalk getting smeared now by the rain.

He says softly to no one her name.