Dear Mary:

Wonderful to hear from you. It's been
so long. I always admired your wit and ready smile.
Did I kiss you once?
Forgive my adolescent desire,
that dark companion of my teens.

He was a rogue Lothario, my desire. He carved
his name in the river and ran deer trails bare foot.
He chased rabbit blood like a hound.
He knew the name of every tree
in the woods behind the barn, but he never told me
the secret of leaves. A colony of ants built
intricate architectures with their bodies
to bridge a springmelt puddle
and touch his bare foot.
He was the glorious
hero of his own story,
and I shall never forgive him
for growing up.

My desire taught me to dance with language,
to touch words that know the music
better than I. My desire led me through
elusive corridors of sound.

In the deep woods of my desire,
I built a bonfire of words,
rubbing one against another
until syllables writhed and whispered,
as if anything in language
could make language tremble.

Ha!

There is mystery, Mary, in words,
a hidden magic down there between sounds.
Touch it. Taste it. Listen
as the druids dreamed
the hidden names of trees.

Frank O'Hara, fine fine poet
died on Fire Island. I was too young--
and the stars too old--to know that
he taught my desire a song.

Grace to be born,
and to live life
as variously as possible.

Is there a more fulfilling ontology?

I'm perpetually fascinated by this
singular world. I may stand among the grand
pylons of the Vicksburg bridge.
I may patrol a pipeline
along the edge of the Tigris River.

The smallest details transfix me.

A dirt dobber shapes her clay
pot around a paralyzed insect
on which she laid her egg.

A maple leaf I touched
twenty and more years ago,
so tender with spring
my thumbnail made it bleed
and left a scar of my passing.