Early summer.

I wasn't always this young.
But gradually my skin learned to smooth over
My insides.  I look at myself in the mirror

And see a stiff overcoat that after a decade of winters
Learned its intended form.

I'll say this several thousand times--
But each time I say it, it grows decreasingly true

I used to be old.
There is no belly anymore
My hands learned to push it away, and the
Sharp pains I thought I felt were like religious feelings,
All unreliable.


I have absconded, too, with everything valuable.  The lights,
The wine in the cellar and the miscellany--all of it catalogued
But only in the way a desperate imagination remembers things,

Counting them on the fingers once they're missing
There are no ladders to climb and look; I stole them
No lines
Just green spots:

The map of my feet left in urgent space
You will feel less inclined to
Ever make anything in that dimpled mold
Again. You won't find any sugar or pictures--ran the faucets and
Drew cross-hair squares on the walls.
Beside the warm wire beaters and the towel damp with cake
I came and saw the sense that everything was

Filled in--I needed only to replace things
With perfect absences.


I will only say this once:
It was here where I started
Everything is so marvelous out here in the jade evening clippings
Where I am now and swing across the
Fence like a kid's baseball