Your red lipstick smile
has begun to fade
in my old photograph

The spigot dripping
drop by drop by drop
each one different

As in so many years ago
same half-smile as your mother’s
as in so many years ago

Summer fireflies
change darkness to night
code in a bottle

The cellar is cool
there toy soldiers lay in dust
their eyes wide open

Moon cuts across the sky
ice hole in the lake

An Egret stands alone in a pond
my shoes stop on the gravel path,
his stalk of leg bending,
his wings with whitening
the deep yellow Sun

For every quark there’s a squark
for every electron there’s a selection
and as far as photons come near photinos
so gravitons are equal to gravitinos
all of them meddle with space
as far back as telescope can tell
spreading out to every atom and star
at the absolute temperature of zero
well before many an afterglow darkens and disappears
and ghostly particles wander in every direction
searching for past matter
from nothing, by nothing, for nothing.

Once upon my childhood walls
bedtime animals chased each other’s dreams
Rain falling on rain

Spouts, drains, pipes, water
out all day longingly

Tin roof thundering
under the beating and beating rain
washing down streets and over dead ends,
but in time’s soon way
Sun will come burning
And Moon’s long day’s journey now begin its turning.

It’s my date of birth
look at all the candles
Making a wish

Under the porch light
A ninety year old man
buttons his collar.

Glitter, paint and paste
on their kindergarden pictures hanging
The Sun drying their suns.

I see a hot-air balloon with a trapeze hanging beneath it, and on the trapeze, there is a woman wearing seed-spangled costume bare-legged, hanging onto the bar by one foot which is inside a red ballet shoe. She has no safety guides, no belts for support, no straps to hold her-nothing to save her except youth and trust-and maybe those red shoes. I cannot bare to watch her as she twirls and rotates as she grabs and rolls with one hand. I turn off the TV But. but I have to. I turn the TV on again. I can’t watch her but I have to. And there she is sitting on the bar with her spangles spangling, one hand waving to the world and to the heavens, smiling at the camera, while behind her is a curtain of pale blue sky..