I’m thinking of the buck that my dog chased yesterday—how I barely got a good look at ‘em: his brown and gray and branch of antler, disappearing into brown and gray and branch of creek-bed, dried up in the June heat. How my dog shouldn’t be able to run like that—not anymore— like a kite, I mean, tied by invisible string to a fleeing thing. His back legs, deaf to the neural conversation, picked up and propelled suddenly—across creek, and street, and hill. As a child’s toy was

I would send you a photo, but you should really see for yourself. She is not just a sight, but also a place--one where you can go, a whole atmosphere of pink and white; a city of barnacled branch; a monument of fullness and fragility. So much of her is already gone-- there on the grass, a mosaic of oxidizing petals--and yet, she is missing nothing. Her blooms are more outstretched this year than I've ever seen; her canopy, so vast that when we go for a walk, a tall friend say

I am looking for a hopeless woman. Not the kind you're thinking of, drinking alone at the dive bar, dissolving into dramas on the mid-day screen. No–I want a woman who has given up those distractions, who has surrendered the search for escape, betterment, or balm. I am looking for a hopeless woman. A woman who, in the morning, before her coffee, steps outside with her aging dog, and sits where it is damp. A woman who watches for what the hawk will do and helps a worm find the

Just because your hand is free, doesn’t mean you should use it. For instance—the baby in your arms: she is small enough to tuck into an elbow crook; the morning quiet enough to get some work done. But it doesn’t mean your fingers should wander—to the pen, the dish rack, the dog. As I sit here, in the second hour’s palm, I have to remind myself that my niece is not a thing I am carrying; She is a soul, a presence, the comet in slow motion, the current who ceaselessly carrie

For her toast for her period for the test results for his text for the words for some silence for someone to see for a witness for anyone really for a body for his touch for it to begin for it to end for tomorrow for another chance for another life for the guests to arrive for the guests to leave for the bath to fill for the water to warm for the water to cool for hunger for fullness for him to wake up for anyone to notice for love to arrive for love to stay for anything but

Can be eyes, staring. Blindfolds, covering. A search party of ten, fumbling in the dark for the lost but sensed. With you, as close as language. In the mornings, instead of writing my dreams down, I would turn to your breath and tell you–about the trees, the fear. My palm cupping the back of your head was the parentheses. And the line I think we'll both remember was where fingers glided slow, down hip to tailbone. In the Presidio, when I reached behind me for your wrists in w