Toppling Through Night Remembering

The tears of George Stinney. Toppling through night remembering the summer working in Hartford writing sonnets until I met Chrisoula and realized the significance of turtles and began writing her turtle poems. Part of what we are getting at is what we can't get at when we think biographically. Rain clouds, faint breezes. Pointing out the potato garden to a friend who asks what we plant in it. The appearance of innocence. Merciful God.

We used to make omelets on Saturday nights, walk to the Cumbys a half mile away and buy two pints of Ben and Jerry's, walk back and eat them in the back yard of my apartment building, too exhausted from law school to "go out." Lightning struck. I called them "candle moths," who knows what they were really called. Making love in Syracuse and other signs of the end. What are peonies if not the cosmos in a frenzy of anguish. 

Toads rest beneath Hosta leaves out front and in paths in the garden, raising questions about travel plans. Sometimes people get a little too excited about evolutionary psychology. What do you see from your bedroom window, does it change when you pray.

Ambulances pass, a little while later a fire truck, and then we're all out on our porches, calling to each other to see what anybody knows, has heard, so-and-so forgot to turn his scanner on, and is this love or something else. I don't want to know I want to wonder do wasps have hearts.

When we won't say we're sorry, what we say instead. Hanging up was more satisfying on rotary phones, wasn't it.

This is every day.