A Nude by Edward Hopper ...this body is home, my childhood is buried here, my sleep rises and sets inside, desire crested and wore itself thin betwee… - Lisel Mueller

What the Dog Perhaps Hears
...We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child...
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through clouds without
a decibel...
whether in autum, when the trees
dry up... there isn't a shudder...
What is it like up there
For us...
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
... we heard nothing when the world changed.

Midwinter Notes
On my shelf of photographs
the dead have come to outnumber the living.
They stand like artificial flowers
among the real ones, so lifelike
even God might be fooled.
...Only after
our garden became a graveyard
...did the white stem rise
from the hermetic bulb,
...five lavender petals
...a brilliant contradiction,
out of phase, like an angel
strayed into Time, our world.

A Prayer For Rain
...let love be brought to ignorance again.