Bright tulips glimpsed through a
window. A clipper tacks in the dusk.
Paint like revolutions can
disfigure: the subject is darkness
surrounding the figure who holds
the brush, the darkness of
money or the lack thereof,
a waste of power in accumulation.

Looking past the figure, eyes
soft from lack of sleep,
shadows drift like small talk
from a fire burning somewhere else,
perhaps in a winter garden
amid questions of marble shapes.
For Rembrandt is old now
even in his fat biography's

terminal pages. Awkwardly
behind its frame the landscape
of his youth slides by: farms,
a fort by the sea, green gatherings
of spring. Partially mad, he
inhabits a cellar with a tame
lion and goes on with his work,
depicting without grief a windmill

beating time on a final plain,
and inside the windmill
a stranger grinding corn,
a man who plans no more. Once
it was so easy to be personal,
now he wants nothing from life
not readily available to all; done,
he sits on his ox and sways

toward home, an ignorant, happy man.
                        

	for Nancy

No walk outlasts its day. Back
of the beach, logs like bones
or pillars, gray from the weather,

and there's an actual pillar
broken among the trunks. Who threw it
down the cliff and why

to be among its brothers? Ferries
ply the straight and sailboats
set their wings against the blue.

Beside me, shards of charcoal
on the beach—another form trees
take—, glass, the dried out skins

of sea anemone. Nature's punning always,
loving the twist of a name. Gulls
dive bombing mussels onto rocks. Crows.

A salmon eaten out, just skin, with vertebrae
exposed and head. Everyone's eating
something. Even trees eat light. Me sandfleas

devour with aching tiny bites. Kids
in the surf, tossing a ball. The world at
sport under a sky no pillars support.
					
I came here to think about poems:
which details count? The whole may
be luminous, but broken into parts

which sandgrain, which occasion rends
the heart? When I phoned home today
you said our two-year-old had learned

to fear his shadow on the road. He
stared and stared and wouldn't move.
Then he saw yours. "Everyone has

a shadow," you said, but he insisted
"Papa!" thinking it was me. Ivy
on the cliff and a decorated heart:

"I love you, I love..." whoever you are.
Last night in a bar, a Frisco woman said
she loved my work, then talked about some

low things she had done. I left her
sitting in a rented car; the wide-eyed
look on her face, like a child left

at home, shadowed my tipsy sleep.
Curse me if I felt virtuous. I know
those California nights get pretty long.

And now I see—trees, fish, the
swarming sandfleas on the beach, we
all are vulnerable. Waves coming

up the sand, I thread the narrowing
space between water and cliff,
using what distance I have from grief

to muse, to hum. My vanishing
sneaker prints record this
lazy afternoon with you, alone.
                        

When a long ball ricochets off your brow, 
you stagger under the whirling grape, steady
yourself and head a pass. A girl on
the sideline says: “That sub looks out of shape.” 

Two minutes later in a daze, you’re lost 
to what’s around you on the field. I yell 
for you to kneel but you can’t hear. We’ll need 		
some other drug to keep your seizures down.

“Good game, Ben,” says a teammate after 
you lose. “But I only played ten minutes!”—
puzzled, pissed—you used to be co-captain of 
this team. “Yeah, but while you were in you were 
awesome!” You smile and high-five. It’s rough 
sometimes but, god, we’re grateful you’re alive.