my feminine Hephaestus. When not playing,
she maintains a conservatory for wolves.

With Alawa and Zephyr in my pack, I’m sure
I’d feel the same as Hélène playing Polonaise in A,

pushing each chord into a bright military
howl. I see eyes spark within the sound,

a stain of red and yellow. She tracks
the final diminuendo: the world’s

end. The night’s end. She and I know
at best, self can only be self

and wolves are never tame.
I’ve played those same notes alone

wishing I could play them for you,
my ring finger stretching to fill

the alpha male of Chopin’s work. He
wrote for bigger hands, and mine ache.

We are a pack of two, Grimaud and I,
scavenging these grand staff fences

for what is classical, what is evolving;
the polished whorls and loops of our

fingertips marking the keys with our final
coda: I’m here. I’m here. I’m here, like you.

Great Aunt Mary said, “I think we should we should go.”

Outside, the sun reigned.
The sand was as usual. Striped umbrellas.
Women in tankinis, their happy and unhappy bodies,
walking along, and the ocean liners far off, all unshaken.

Later we bought a six pack and a bag of groceries.
Did you feel it? a stranger in line asked.

The National Cathedral, a place I have visited only twice,
lost three pinnacles off its central tower.

What else? Nothing else, or this:
the bees come, the apples.

In September my son writes an essay called “Brave Boy,”
and the teacher calls his handwriting sloppy.

The vagabond stands on the green island,
and the light changes.

Why do the bees sound so happy this year?
Why are the houses all awake,
shining lights even in daylight?

The anti-confessional prodigal daughter
goes about her business, filing papers, buying groceries.

When I stand in the white glow of the refrigeration zone
in Paradise Liquors it’s the names I love:

Flying Dog, Resurrection, Woody Creek.

It’s not all about high alcohol content.

Shock Top, Raging Bitch, Blue Moon.

Something for the afternoon, when the children
mine for virtual diamonds.
How do I get a pickaxe?
Press B.

The bees come. The apples.

Like the time you took me by the throat
and pushed. And the moment the light
disappeared from your body. And when I realized
the cause of my want was something
more shallow than I’ll ever admit.

The next morning I found a lump in my breast,
turned over, then dreamt of a lily that told me
the day I would die, and the lily became a jar
of impossible things and fell, blushing.

The next time I woke—you stirred, not quite gone.

ready at my feet. They call me a bird,
but I rust: a dropped key, forgotten

scissors. I make my own forest and coax
thorns, moths, and metal to swarm in my hairnest.

The sky is a door in a sky. I wait
for messages sent by suspended ribbons,

which are the arteries of devotion.
Here are my monkeys and bears, here is

my new face. I go deeper into the trees
when he runs to her. My mouth is full

of watermelon. Its sweetness gone out
like a veladora. I am the horse that runs.

I dreamed there was such a scene as in a kitchen, a vague mother
bent over the sink devastated and safe. I keep waking up

in someone else’s bed: awake inside a wolf’s panting throat
is how I understand hunger. My loneliness is bikeable,

it is as though I have always worn a red cloak in the woods.
Teach me sorry. Teach me the trees. German darkness.

I worship the townhouses I so ritually leave, the waifish necks
of your citizens, and how there is only one word for snow finally.

Lights stay on in too many locked houses. A squanderer
builds his kingdom into the ground. We forget to breathe

when we are instructed breath is continual. What I want touch to be
scatters flies in a neighboring basement, is as bountiful as tweed

in November. Mud husbands me to this terrible ordeal of burial.
But ruins bore me, I hate their gawked failure. Look to your own ugly sky.