Poem

I walk toward a paddock bordered by cypress trees.
Philip Hodgins is on a tractor harrowing forty acres.
I can’t see his face but I know it is him
methodically going about his business,

Friends knew he lived alone
in an old fashioned block of apartments
with large windows facing the sea
and a lift like a lion’s cage

The world, the tranquil punctual gyroscope,
Is more or less at peace after her fashion,
Broad bowels work, creatures rejoice or mope,

the west coast of irish light
is inside everything and through everything
like the washing on the line, the pegs
the sky, the wind, this window, and your hands, your eyes

I could say hello to things.
Theodore Roethke

i.
The hand’s wave,
when it comes –

Too hot and humid to do more than drowse
And slip – who knows how brief the interims? –
Into a chafed unconsciousness,

I

Patiently, ticket by ticket, a soft-stepped crowd
advances into the mimic ship’s hull half-
sailed out of the foyer wall, as if advancing into
somebody else’s dream –

What am I? A crushed hominid.
A can of couscous, seeding.
A shudder of my former self, a
self-defrosting fridge. Good

For months Mozart has been so crucial I haven’t played him.
The winds, filibustering the house, have heard
the chimney crackle and the paint strain
while the old obsessions went ignored. What was the point?