at next day noon,
a bump’s developed
at the center of the cap.
And the surface has
more experience
—with oxygen, I guess.
It’s flecking brown.
If we are reminded of
our own hands
and our own arms,
we might detect
decline in this.
And notice, too,
the veil has dropped.
The cap is drying from
the edges in.
Furthermore,
one side has tipped,
giving us a glimpse
of gills without our close
approach or
stooping much,
visceral
without our touch.
Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?
Each morning my eye goes straight to the high bare branches of the ash
where a plastic Hy-Vee bag tugs and puffs
but has no choice.
Well I won’t see that in France,
I say to myself, but the consolation is as temporary
as the trip will have been
once I’m standing here again,
staring at that bag
and thinking, Now that’s the kind of thing I never saw in France.
It looks so orphaned and waif-like
against the shiny gray bark of the ash and the muted gray of the sky,
so white, so insubstantial, so wanting,
and, even with its one red word,
so caught there in the tree.
I’m certain it can hang on to the branch that has pierced it
for another six weeks.
There may be another bag in the maple by then,
recently freed from a thatch of wet leaves
or come tumbling
lightly from the garbage truck
that will have taken on that day no offering from us.
On the day we come back, it will still be
bare as scattered bones out there,
not yet the middle of March.
the ground will be hard. The grass will be tan.
This is so like me,
imagining,
not the cottage roofs of flat stones
pictured in the Green Guide to the Dordogne,
the massive ramparts for the great gone door of Domme,
but the day after—these littered horizons, and winter
still trying to get out of the yard.
On the day we come back
the ground will be hard. The grass will be tan.
But there will come a day much deeper into spring,
a day shady and humid
in the unfurled foliage of June,
when I realize I haven’t thought about that bag in weeks
because I can’t see it at all,
I can’t see its branch.
The massive ramparts for the great gone door of Domme
will have lost a lot of bulk by then,
resembling more and more the sketch
on page twenty-one
in the Green Guide to the Dordogne.
They Are Widening the Road
The pipes have been revealed, enormous,
that lurked all along underground.
The clay-colored dirt is piled. Barriers
are fortified by barrels, hurdles, stakes.
Here’s the backhoe making three-point
turns, the traffic at a halt. The heat.
The sun that bakes the dust. The sun
through glass that magnifies the heat.
Too near to every business here, and house,
a mile of road has moved from plan
to controversy to regret. Several
of the orange cones, disturbed,
have tumbled into rolling hazards.
Here is the church, the hardware store,
the auto supply, the bank, the gallery,
the pharmacy, the school. Here is the other
auto supply. Here is the world
with its six billion people, with its
how many random cancellations
of the single will, hopeful, defeated,
locked once to another—rhythm, scent
and curvature—in the ancient act
of increase, not thought of in these terms,
but felt: a direction that was sure.
Detained, detoured, deferred.
The personal is different than the whole.
We are directed into other lanes.
Does anybody out there feel
that the issue of fairness has been given,
all too often, a disproportionate attention?
It takes but gentle mention and the matter’s
tabled yet again. With us
or without us, an agenda slips along
like mercury through tubes of glass.
The line is longer and the great big sound
from close behind is right inside our car.
There is no moving up in line
and the pavement of the lane ahead is ripped.
Pilot car
Follow me
Buttons
The sons of friends have learned to fold and snap paper
into abruptly-coming noise at my head. Oh, let them
in their red-faced rowdiness have a bit of fun at my expense,
I said to myself, what have I done so worthy of respect?
I’ve worked soil through a sieve, let it cover seeds I couldn’t see.
I’ve taken pleasure in rolling up loaves of once-risen dough.
Yesterday