The hills can tell

by how flat your eyes are

how near a thing has become.

Dogs and wolves share a denning instinct.

To dig down.

The straw is a calendar.

Beatific, shock-white frost

jagged around the edge of the leaf.  Moon,

your daughter is the tip of my tongue.

But in the moonlight

she has not been heard.

On the bus, we catch each other to the point of acknowledgment

then turn away.

One man waits with an unlit cigarette on his lip.

The soft side of his wrist tattooed

with an ideogram. Silver links of his watchband

after Juan Ramón Jiménez
 

Shout for joy!

Shout for joy! But do not

wake the other dead, our friends

the shore ruffles.      The hem of a slip

the sleeper 

is pulled out into the middle of his most beautiful dream. 

A butterfly

darkens. Lowers itself from the massive white cloud

migrating north toward the Sahara.

The desert is moving south.