from The Hummingbird
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draw curves and scooped forms
from the volume outside the window
where a bee drops into cup
after cup an all-day drunk
S lets us house-sit upstate
while she birdwatches in south Jersey
from the faithful RV
we once stood inside to admire
“it’s bigger than it looks”
I’m not prepared for the excellent quality
of her high-powered binoculars and these are just
the home pair so sensitive they need bracing
or the jumping image makes me seasick
through them a hummingbird
(unlike the one who refused to alight, earlier)
perches a moment on the feeder’s lip
what’s magnified is more real
Pessoa says freedom
is freedom to contemplate by sight alone
I won’t become a bird watcher
but perceive its absorbing influence
the markings, habits, heraldry
a glittering demimonde
glimpsed behind tall, forbidding hedges
or from the boulevard through a closing door
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one loves effect, tolerates cause
drags a dipstick across the pond
onto whose surface paint of many colors was poured
until an elegant paisley appears
everything’s drifting around, nervy
and entangled seed pods, cigarette smoke
ashes I watch sift down from the secluded
second-story deck liquid Hudson Valley evenings
when a red lighter’s luminous against wall-to-wall green
continual croaking and shrieking in the trees
it rained earlier, then it rains
on every channel at once, but we’re already inside
luscious pages, cream in color, when tilted
toward the light reveal faint, damp indentations
where my fingertips rested a moment too long
against the fibers
I’m peeing “beaded bubbles winking at
the brim” when you appear in the bathroom’s
opposite door, having come through
the office, past the CDs, to put on Abbey Road
and so I quit the pleece department
and got myself a steady job
Mom texts from two counties away, the storm
knocked out her power she’s reading by yorzheit candle
like the Lintons we cast a shadow on the picture window
are a Heathcliff and Catherine huddled out there
watching us dance to Prince and blast The Who?
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concerning the lifespan of rewards
or reward-enjoying there is an etiquette
“Have we ever done this?”
“I think I’d remember if we had”
“And this?” “Definitely not”
the clay pots are wet, or wet again thyme and basil leaves
their deepest green rose of sharon magnificent
summers are sad now and the temperate, we understand
was always a miracle, our name for what
nature only does once
recall trips when after the nuisance of an appointment in town
you return to find the others have already had their day in the sun
decide to go anyway while they nap and read
visit alone the late afternoon beach
the sea suggests a menacing intelligence at work
determined to sift every grain
back at the house, still out of sync
come in sandy and surly to find them
embarked already on drinks and dinner prep
you head up to shower
but first sit at the edge of the bed in the dark
doting on an impossibility
you keep scrupulously to yourself
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windows are always unreal
we invented the frame
to dream wide awake
is what guides the hummingbird
closer to a pang or a thrill? this one’s
yellow stripe’s dull and spotty as the double line
down a worn winter road
the hummingbird and I are always hungry
each creature has its degree of skittishness knows how quick
or ever-moving or patient it needs to be, in direct relation
to the style of its predators, their own relative speed
and flair for acceleration or capacity to blend in and stalk
a fly butts the glass pane, I mistake
the sound for R rapping at the door with a knuckle
but when I look up she isn’t there return to
my work, as I call it without conviction
how could we recognize a satisfying version of a thing
without the forms, Socrates continues, as he
and his companion watch a play by torchlight
is there a cocktail called a hemlock? a craft beer?
a fly butts the glass pane, I mistake
the sound for R rapping at the door with a knuckle
but when I look up she isn’t there
return to my work, sewing costumes
for one of those rushed, blushing skits
where a few stand in for all
as if each thing didn’t stand for another
try to define analogy
you’ll soon be in deep water
try to guess the lottery numbers
you won’t succeed better to invent a system
that operates on the difference between your numbers
and the future winning combination
until that difference has been reduced to zero
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mid-afternoon, possibility, vagrancy
shifting of furniture, divvying
up of light and shade, blood sugar’s
pitch and roll, what the proud or melancholy
call interiority breaking down food into nutrients
until what has been dispossessed
of the nutrients it bore is precisely shit
hard not to believe some judicious force
turns my talent up and down with a knob
depending on how much I am myself
finicky rain, humidity, the sun goes down
AC set to outer space
the present exhausts, evaporates
from time to time one must leave it
to make more marks
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from the conservatory I text about dinner ideas
split tree across the yard attests
lightning’s work is bold, permanent
R’s in true posthuman form thumb a blur
above her phone smokes, laughs at someone’s
message in a way that makes my stomach hurt
to make the hummingbird disappear
simply lift the binoculars from the table
tomato plants clench their roots
against the deluge they’ll slurp up later
to brew their juice
Slim the cat slips through the wet grass
“When a vast part of what existed
withdrew into the invisible, this didn’t
mean it stopped happening. But it became
easier to think it wasn’t happening”
we know about tulip mania
but this article says a scholar
must dutifully report, historically (what else?)
it never actually occurred removing at a stroke
certain load-bearing premises
find the needle in the haystack
by torching the haystack
not a poem, exactly
more like the one obscure container
superstitious sailors let circle the globe unopened
by which I mean it’s ongoing
and includes among its contents
illicit parts that would need to be pulled out
and placed in proper relation
to other parts traveling alongside
a hopeless bargain with god
to create the weapon with which to maim
the very part of him that foresaw
and for some obscure reason permits it
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the sun high but filtered
scents vegetal, bird and
bug song unhurried
twigs gray and lichen
speckling their crooks light blue
big ant
scales my power cord
achieves the plug
prepares to mount the keyboard
I give it a decisive flick
we’re both surprised when an instant later
it’s flat against the windowpane
six feet away, intact and unharmed
or at least there’s only a beat
before it goes its way across the glass
we’ll meet again don’t bother fate